


People Will Say

by Notesfromaclassroom



Series: The Academy [2]
Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-10
Updated: 2012-04-06
Packaged: 2017-11-01 18:06:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 96,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/359728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Notesfromaclassroom/pseuds/Notesfromaclassroom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a year Spock and Uhura will live dangerously, thinking no one suspects that they are lovers, believing they will not get caught.  </p>
<p>This is the story about how wrong they are.</p>
<p>Voted Best Character Study on LJ's Spock_Uhura community.</p>
<p>Chapters 13 and 14 describe Spock's disciplinary hearing for fraternization.</p>
<p>Complete.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Infirmary

**Disclaimer: I don't work here for money; I play here for fun.**

If she sees him, she will say that she is here for a friend.

Or that she is getting a prescription refilled.

Neither is technically a lie. Nor exactly the truth.

Still, it would be better if she doesn't see him. Leonard McCoy isn't stupid, and if he starts asking too many questions, she isn't sure what he might figure out.

Pushing open the glass door to the Academy infirmary, Nyota looks past the receptionist's desk to the work station beyond. No McCoy—just a short red-headed woman picking up a data chip and a taller man in nurse's scrubs.

As she signs in, Nyota affects her most casual voice and says, "Is Dr. McCoy working today, by any chance?"

The receptionist eyes her oddly— _what does that mean?—_ and then says, "Not yet, but he's somewhere in the hospital. Do you want me to page him?"

"No, thank you," Nyota says, flashing a quick smile and turning to take a seat on an orange plastic chair near the front door.

The Starfleet hospital is extensive. The odds are good that she will be in and out of the little infirmary attached to the south wing before McCoy comes on duty.

Nyota has researched and rehearsed what she will say—so she is surprised that when her name is called and the nurse in scrubs leads her to an examination room, she feels her heart thrumming in her throat.

"What can we do for you today?" the nurse says, motioning for Nyota to sit on the oversized chair in the center of the room. The nurse—a tall, lanky man with a definite five o'clock shadow—barely looks at her, keeping his gaze instead on his handheld PADD. Something about his inattention both annoys and relieves Nyota, and with a sigh she says, "I need to change my birth control."

At this the nurse does look up. His eyes widen but he has the good grace to say nothing. Looking down again, he taps something onto the screen of the PADD and says, "Well, let's get your vitals and I'll let the doctor know you're here."

As she expects, her blood pressure is slightly elevated for her, though certainly within normal parameters. Nerves. _Calm down_ , she tells herself. _You know what to say._

She doesn't have to wait long. In a few minutes she hears the doorknob turn and the doctor comes in, a handsome dark haired man who introduces himself as Steven Puri.

"Your records show you are currently taking a standard antigen shot for birth control," he says, reading from the PADD. "But you aren't satisfied with it?"

At that he looks up at her, his brown eyes warm, his demeanor quiet and not at all rushed. _Take all the time you need_ , he seems to be saying with his posture, his body language. Nyota flashes what she hopes is a grateful look as she leans forward slightly.

"It's just that I, uh, need something else."

She waits for Dr. Puri to ask her to clarify but he seems content to wait.

"So, I've decided," Nyota continues, "that I'd like an anovulant instead."

Darting a glance at Dr. Puri, she sees him react. Surprise, certainly, but something else crosses his face.

"I don't recommend it," he says, frowning slightly.

"But," Nyota says, struggling to keep her voice even, "I think it would work better for me."

Dr. Puri looks down at his PADD for a moment and then sets it aside on the worktable, freeing his hands. He laces his fingers together and rests his arms on his thighs, leaning forward.

"We rarely use anovulants anymore," he says, tilting his head and searching her gaze. "Completely suppressing ovulation that way—well, antigens don't reconfigure your biology the way those old style anovulant contraceptives did. Antigen therapy just targets the gametes of your partner—"

"I know how they work," Nyota says, not bothering to keep the annoyance from her voice. Antigen therapy isn't rocket science. Unlike normal antigens, which stimulate antibodies to attack bacteria or viruses, contraceptive antigens make human eggs and sperm ignore each other. Human men and women getting regular shots are, in effect, sterile.

At least to each other.

As far as her body is concerned, human sperm are invisible, uninteresting, something to ignore or avoid.

But Vulcan sperm—

"Would probably be ignored as well," Spock had said two days ago when they had sat quietly in his apartment, discussing their options. His words had been matter-of-fact, but something in his tone alerted Nyota to an unspoken sadness. She had reached for his hand but he had deftly angled away—not far, but enough to signal his reluctance to share what he was feeling at that moment. She let her hands drop to her lap.

"Still," she said, "just to be safe—"

The antigen therapy could certainly be tailored to include any species, not just human. But that would mean an explanation Nyota is hesitant to offer the doctor sitting before her right now.

Dr. Puri, however, is proving difficult to get around.

"Quite frankly," he says, "we don't even have any anovulants on hand. I can't think of the last time I prescribed them. They alter your hormonal cycle and have all sorts of side effects. You would have to have it made special in the lab, but why bother? Antigens are basically foolproof."

Something in Dr. Puri's tone catches her attention, and Nyota takes a breath. _How much can she say without saying too much?_

"But what if my partner—"

And _there_. She sees dawning comprehension cross the doctor's face.

"Ah," he says softly, "we can replicate most antigens if you need something other than…human."

Although the doctor tries to sound nonchalant, Nyota picks up his slight hesitation, his surprise at her unspoken admission of an interspecies relationship—not unheard of, certainly, but still rare enough to raise eyebrows, even here at Starfleet.

She debates for a moment. If the anovulants are as problematic as the doctor says….

"Vulcan," she says suddenly, and to his credit, Dr. Puri takes his PADD from the worktable and taps the screen with his stylus as if her request isn't at all unusual.

"No problem at all," Dr. Puri says, looking up, and Nyota says, "And human."

For a heartbeat she worries that he knows Spock—or knows of him and his dual biological heritage—and will put the pieces together.

But she remembers how she herself had first learned of Spock's human mother. If not for the hover bus accident that had sent Spock to the hospital with a serious concussion and a broken wrist—and which brought his cousin Chris to San Francisco to care for him—she might not know even now.

Nor was she the only cadet not to know about Spock's background. After the accident Nyota had said something to her roommate Gaila, who had promptly sniffed indignantly and said, "That explains his unusual aroma. I _knew_ he wasn't like the other Vulcans I've met."

So the odds are that even if the doctor does know Spock, he will not be privy to much personal information about him. Her request will call up some other explanation.

She feels herself flush—but part of her is amused to find herself hoping that Dr. Puri—this nice, attentive, open-minded doctor—will think she is, as Jim Kirk might say, _playing the field_.

"And human." Dr. Puri taps on the PADD some more and says, "Give me a few minutes and I'll be back with your shot."

As she watches his back as he retreats from the room, Nyota lets out a breath she didn't know she was holding. After all that planning, that worry. The doctor is right that antigen therapy is better. She just hadn't expected to be able to arrange it without giving away too much.

But she's managed it. And no one is any wiser. She permits herself a sigh of relief.

And then, in celebration of her good fortune, or as a way to congratulate herself, she hums a little tune while she waits for the doctor to return.

X X X X X X X

As he does every morning, Steven Puri rises early and calls his mother in Chandigarh. If he gets up as the sun rises, he can catch her after she has cooked and cleaned up after her evening meal and before she puts the young ones to bed.

Right now she has only two young ones living with her—the smallest number she has ever had—and Dr. Puri worries that it is by his mother's choice, that her strength and energy are starting to flag at last.

But she reassures him that she is fine, that the two boys who are living with her are brothers whose parents are temporarily off-planet on a research assignment for a Martian mining company and are not, as most of the children who have lived with her and called her mother, orphaned by some natural or unnatural disaster.

Indeed, Dr. Puri cannot remember his own parents, killed in the food riots of 2221 in Lahore. Three of his adopted brothers were also orphaned by subsequent civil unrest in the next few years until the Federation stepped in and helped organize the displaced local farmers.

His mother—the woman he calls every morning before starting his day—has no biological children of her own, but she has raised dozens. Not all of them still call her _mother_ or are as attentive as Dr. Puri, who calls her not out of obligation or even gratitude, but because hearing his mother's voice, even briefly, feels like a form of worship.

And for a man of science who left religion long ago, this is enough.

"What did you think?" his mother says now as Dr. Puri sits on the veranda of his apartment building, watching the sun rise over the bay.

"She was nice," he says noncommittally, knowing his mother will not be satisfied. Sure enough, she protests.

"Nice? Nice? What kind of word is that? Her own practice, independent, pretty—good references. And I went to a lot of trouble—"

"Yes, you did," Dr. Puri says, laughing. "And the marriage broker went to a lot of trouble. And I do appreciate it."

"But just _nice_? Nothing more?"

Before answering, he considers what his mother is really asking. Not just if the woman she has arranged for him to meet—and possibly marry—a pretty young family practitioner named Priya Patel who lives in Monterey, whose father still lives in India not too far from Chandigarh—is acceptable, but whether or not he is ready to settle down, start a family, _make a life_ , as his mother calls it, as if what he has done until now is mere rehearsal.

He isn't sure how to answer her.

Is he ready?

If Chris Pike hadn't stopped by his office at the hospital to finalize his offer last week, he might have said yes—or at least, he would entertain his mother's suggestion to _meet a nice girl_ with more enthusiasm.

But the chance to go to space—

Would any woman be willing to stay behind while he headed off on the Federation flagship as chief medical officer? Would it be fair to ask someone to?

"She was _very_ nice," he says, and he hears his mother sighing halfway around the world.

"I'll look some more," she says, and Dr. Puri laughs again.

"Stop trying so hard," he says, and he hears his mother sigh louder.

He steers the rest of the conversation to other concerns—a mutual friend who has just moved to California, an unusual rainy spell of weather—and then he tells her, as he always does, that he has to go but that he will call again tomorrow. Just before he closes the connection, he says _thank you_ —not _I love you_ , or _I miss you_ , but something closer to what he feels when he thinks of his mother.

Something larger.

And then he stretches and runs through part of the Presidio before showering and heading to his shift at the hospital and the infirmary.

Jacqueline meets him at the service entrance to the infirmary, shaking her red curls in mock anger.

"You are now," she says, "one minute late. Your first patient is already waiting in room two."

Handing him a PADD, she turns and sashays with an exaggerated gait back down the hall—the performance for his benefit. He grins appreciatively.

Scanning the PADD as he makes his way to examination room two, he is momentarily surprised. A healthy young cadet asking about birth control—no, asking to change birth control. Antigen therapy is so easily tolerated, so widely used, that he can't imagine why anyone would choose something else.

The first thing he notices about the young woman—Cadet Uhura—sitting on the other side of the door is that she is clearly nervous. Healthy, apparently. Attractive, certainly.

And visibly anxious.

About this visit in particular? Or about medical personnel in general?

His training kicks in immediately and he slows down, introducing himself and asking about the reason for her visit.

"So, I've decided," he hears the cadet say, "that I'd like an anovulant instead."

In all the years that he has staffed the infirmary, he has never had a similar request. Most people, he suspects, don't even know about anovulants—a contraceptive once popular but rarely used now.

She's been doing her homework. But why?

"I don't recommend it," he says, frowning slightly.

"But I think it would work better for me."

Determined—he has to give her that. But… _why?_

He looks down at his PADD for a moment and then sets it aside on the worktable, freeing his hands. He laces his fingers together and rests his arms on his thighs, leaning forward, hoping to encourage the young woman to give her reason for her odd request.

"We rarely use anovulants anymore," he says, tilting his head and searching her gaze. "Completely suppressing ovulation that way—well, antigens don't reconfigure your biology the way those old style anovulant contraceptives did. Antigen therapy just targets the gametes of your partner—"

"I know how they work."

A serious miscalculation on his part. Now she's not only anxious, she's annoyed. He hadn't meant to sound condescending. Of course she wouldn't need a primer on how antigen therapy works—she's been doing some reading on her own.

A different tack, then.

"Quite frankly," he says, "we don't even have any anovulants on hand. I can't think of the last time I prescribed them. They alter your hormonal cycle and have all sorts of side effects. You would have to have it made special in the lab, but why bother? Antigens are basically foolproof."

He hears Cadet Uhura take a breath and looks up in time to see her glance at him. She wants to tell him something—

"But what if my partner—"

Tamping down his astonishment, Dr. Puri tries to sound less flummoxed than he feels. At some level he is ashamed of his parochial attitude. This is, after all, Starfleet, and although humans outnumber off-worlders by a substantial number, intimate contact has to occur sometimes—

"Ah," he says softly, "we can replicate most antigens if you need something other than…human."

"Vulcan," the cadet says.

Of all the possibilities she could have said, this is the most surprising he can imagine. If there are any Vulcan cadets currently enrolled at the Academy, Dr. Puri doesn't know about them. Vulcan is the most under-represented in Starfleet of all of the founding members of the Federation.

Apeing a casual response, Dr. Puri takes his PADD from the worktable and taps the screen with his stylus.

"No problem at all," he says, looking up, and then Cadet Uhura says, "And human."

Tying not to look startled, Dr. Puri marks the PADD. The cadet's sexuality is her own business. And if she does have multiple partners, planning ahead is…wise.

"And human," Dr. Puri says, sending the signal from his PADD to the lab. In a few minutes the antigen shot will be ready and the cadet can be on her way. Hazarding a close look before he stands up, Dr. Puri is struck by the change in her attitude, in her noticeable relief. The slight sweat on her palms and at her temples, the rigid posture that denoted her nervousness—all gone.

He'll have to think about that later.

The rest of the day is routine by contrast, a sprained wrist from an awkward fall during PT, two cases of incipient flu, regularly scheduled checkups from crew either rotating off a starship or getting ready to embark.

Until the last patient of the day.

"Good luck," Jacqueline says cryptically, handing him the PADD and nodding toward the same examination room where he had seen Cadet Uhura earlier. "You're going to need it."

"Why—" he says, but Jacqueline is already at the other end of the corridor.

He almost stumbles when he scans the PADD. A Vulcan?

Surely a coincidence—

The patient is a Vulcan, all right—and as self-contained and non-expressive as the others Dr. Puri has known over the years. Dark eyes, dark hair, the characteristic upswept brows and distinctive ears—and yet…something about the man—Dr. Puri glances at the PADD to get his name—something about Commander Spock is… _off._

Or, not _off_ , but _different_.

First of all, because he is here, in the Academy infirmary. Most Vulcans would seek a Vulcan healer for normal illnesses. Something else, then.

"I'm Steven Puri," he says, reaching his hand forward automatically.

For a second his hand hovers in the air, unacknowledged, and Dr. Puri gives himself a mental shake and smiles.

"Oh, right," he says. "Sorry about that. Force of habit."

Commander Spock says nothing but continues to watch the doctor with an intensity that makes him feel uneasy. Is he doing something else culturally insensitive? If he is, he isn't aware. Dr. Puri sits on the small wheeled stool and takes the stylus from the top of the PADD.

"So, what can I do for you today?"

For a moment the Vulcan commander continues to look at him, unblinking.

 _Two can play this game_ , Dr. Puri thinks. He grows very still and waits.

"I wish," Commander Spock says at last, "to begin antigen therapy for contraceptive purposes."

Unbidden, an image of the pretty, dark cadet who had sat here earlier—he casts about in his memory for her name—comes to the doctor.

_Uhura._

No Vulcan cadets are enrolled on campus right now.

Dr. Puri scrolls down the biographical information on the PADD. The Commander teaches at the Academy.

Looking up, the doctor says, "Certainly."

Even as he says it, he feels disingenuous, but he has to ask.

"For protection against Vulcan gametes?"

To his amazement, the Commander blinks, apparently caught off guard by the question.

For a moment Dr. Puri is convinced that the Commander is considering leaving without answering—his shoulders tense and he blanches.

"Of course," Dr. Puri hurries on, "I see in your records that you have some human ancestry. The standard therapy we give humans should work for you, too—if all you need is protection against human gametes. If you also need protection against Vulcan cells, we can add the Vulcan antigen—"

"The standard therapy is sufficient," the Commander says quickly, and Dr. Puri taps the orders into the PADD.

"Give me a moment," he says, rising, "to get everything ready."

"What did I tell you?" Jacqueline asks later, as she is locking the front doors and tidying the waiting room. "Talk about hard to read. I couldn't get a word out of him."

Dr. Puri finishes making notes in the computer and says over his shoulder, "Oh, I don't know. I found out plenty."

His supper that night is ordinary, boring—a frozen curry heated while he watches the newsfeeds on the kitchen monitor, then eaten from the carton while he stands at the counter. Afterward as he cleans up, Dr. Puri turns off the newsfeeds. He isn't watching them anyway. His attention keeps drifting to his first and last patients of the day, considering what he knows for certain and what is mere speculation.

A cadet. A professor.

Coincidence?

With his medical clearance, he could investigate further, check out the list of courses she has taken, match them against the ones he teaches. A simple matter to forward that information to the dean with a suggestion that some sexual impropriety might be in play. The cadet might, after all, be feeling pressured to offer favors for grades—might even be unaware that she is being coerced by the unequal power differential—

But that doesn't square with what he sensed from either of them today. If they were stressed to be at the clinic asking for birth control, it wasn't out of duty or fear but from something else, something not even like worry, but more like concern, or consideration.

And it certainly doesn't square with what he knows about Vulcans—private, yes, but honest to a fault, honorable, even. Not the kind of people known to coerce anyone into anything, let alone coerce a subordinate into sexual compromise.

A relationship then. An authentic one, one based on attraction and perhaps affection—and one they intend to keep quiet and safe.

As a Starfleet officer, he has a responsibility to report misconduct if he knows about it.

As their physician, he has a greater responsibility to their health and well-being.

And what does he know, really?

That if they have found each other, unlikely as that may seem, they are as tragic as all star crossed lovers—for a day of reckoning will find them out eventually, even if he keeps their secret.

Perhaps. Perhaps not.

Perhaps their luck will hold, and they will find comfort in each other's company, tenderly, not standing alone in a dark kitchen eating frozen curry from a paper carton, watching news that doesn't affect them at all.

He wipes his hands and pulls his comm from his pocket, scrolling through the contacts until he finds a number for Priya Patel. She had seemed _nice_ when they had spoken last night on the phone. His mother will be happy if he gives her a second chance.

The _Enterprise_ doesn't launch for almost two years.

A lot can happen in that time.

No reason anyone should have to spend it alone.

X X X X X X X X

He's never worried much about contraception.

When Spock was a young teenager, two Vulcan specialists told his parents that while he was not sterile, his dual heritage made natural fertilization problematic. The human genetic material carried by his sperm would be rejected by a Vulcan ovum—and although the healers did not say so, when he was older he realized that a human partner would have the same trouble conceiving his child because of his Vulcan DNA.

If T'Pring's family had cause for concern, they did not express it. After all, Spock's very existence meant that Vulcan and human genetic material could be manipulated to create a viable fetus. A Vulcan-human hybrid should, theoretically at least, have just as much chance of success.

Still, in his sexual explorations with T'Pring, Spock had been inexcusably casual, leaving the effort at contraception to her.

Later, when he left Vulcan for the Academy, he had left the contraceptive choices to his human partners, telling himself, not untruthfully, that the odds of his getting anyone pregnant were almost nonexistent—and since most cadets routinely got the antigen shots, he didn't need to. Redundancy, at least in this case, wasn't necessary.

Now when he thinks about his earlier cavalier attitude, he feels not only regret but something deeper, something akin to remorse.

He refuses to treat Nyota the same way. He refuses to risk her career, her future—and if taking antigen therapy is redundant for him, so be it. Sharing the effort is the right thing to do, the only thing he will do.

Their conversation two days ago had helped him decide. As they had talked, he had remembered waking one night hearing his mother's cries, seeing her bleeding and in pain as she suffered a miscarriage.

And he remembered the hushed words he had overheard from his Aunt Cecilia and his father—words about other children lost before he himself was born.

So he sets aside his caution and leaves after his last class of the day for the infirmary, arriving almost too late to be seen.

When the red-headed receptionist asks him the nature of his visit, he stares her down.

"I will speak to the doctor," he says, channeling Sarek in one of his more imperious moods, and she blinks and asks him no more questions before leading him to the examination room.

As soon as the doctor enters, Spock notes that he is of average height, dark-skinned, straight-haired, probably from the Indian subcontinent. His name confirms his origins.

Startled when the doctor holds out his hand for a traditional human shake, Spock doesn't move for a moment. Should he say something? Lately he has drawn criticism from several quarters for pointing out the mistakes of others. Last week the head of the computer sciences department took him aside to suggest that he refrain from offering unsolicited critiques of formal presentations in professional staffings, even though the professor whose presentation he had criticized made at least two miscalculations that changed how the data was interpreted.

And the usually affable assistant dean had looked annoyed when Spock had corrected his memo with the wrong date for an upcoming conference.

So he says nothing but looks at the doctor's hand.

"Oh, right," Dr. Puri says after a moment, dropping his hand. "Sorry about that. Force of habit. So, what can I do for you today?"

Somehow the grace that the doctor shows handling his _faux pas_ engenders a trust—and Spock says, "I wish to begin antigen therapy for contraceptive purposes."

If the doctor finds his request unusual, he says nothing but continues to read something on the medical PADD.

"Certainly."

Feeling a wash of relief, Spock is caught off guard by the doctor's next question.

"For protection against Vulcan gametes?"

Dr. Puri's assumption is logical, naturally. _How to broach the truth without actually revealing it…._

Before he can reply, the doctor continues.

"Of course, I see in your records that you have some human ancestry. The standard therapy we give humans should work for you, too—if all you need is protection against human gametes. If you also need protection against Vulcan cells, we can add the Vulcan antigen—"

"The standard therapy is sufficient," Spock says, and Dr. Puri taps the orders into the PADD.

"Give me a moment," he says, rising, "to get everything ready."

When he leaves the infirmary, Spock thinks of a metaphor he has heard his mother use but never understood before: _a weight off his shoulders._ Navigating the infirmary successfully, getting the antigen shot, the feeling of solidarity with Nyota—a weight has been lifted, almost as if an actual physical burden has evaporated, one that had bent him over without his even being aware.

Because it is a Monday night, Nyota will still be in the lab finishing tutorials. With a lightened step Spock walks more quickly than he customarily does, taking two steps and then three up the stairs until he reaches the third floor landing in the language building. At the end of the hall is his office, dark and locked. To his right is the lab, and even without seeing into it, he can hear Nyota's footsteps and someone else, too, walking toward the door. Pulling open the door, Spock notes an unusual look on the student's face—astonishment, probably at his sudden appearance.

Nyota's expression is easier to read. Her grin and narrowed eyes radiate her pleasure at seeing him.

"That's the last one," she says, indicating the student whose footfalls echo down the hallway toward the elevator. "I can be ready to go in a jiffy."

"If by _jiffy_ you mean the 4.35 minutes necessary to close the computers and set the alarm, then I concur."

"That," Nyota says, glancing over her shoulder at him as she turns to flip the control console off, "is precisely what I mean. Thank you for being accurate—for a change."

This is the type of repartee he shares with no one else—and he feels a wave of enjoyment in her teasing that he does not try to rationalize away.

"Because you find such pleasure in accuracy," he says as she palms off the lights and locks the lab door, "then I will point out to you that you have exactly three options for an evening meal, though if you delay in your decision by more than 7 minutes, your options will be reduced to 2."

"The cafeteria closes in 7 minutes," Nyota says immediately, and Spock nods professorially.

"That leaves the market deli," she says. He takes her elbow as she starts down the stairs and she glances up at him. _Is his touch too patronizing?_ He pulls his hand away.

"Or, she adds, looking down at his hand and then pausing on the stairs, glancing around at the empty stairwell before letting her fingers drift to his, "we could cook up something in your apartment."

He meets her gaze and sweeps his fingers over hers.

"Indeed," he says, "we could _cook up something_ in my apartment. But I thought you wanted to eat."

He doesn't smile and he knows she doesn't expect him to—but he lifts one brow and tilts his head slightly—something that often makes her laugh for them both.

"The market deli it is, then," she says, grinning, and before he can stop himself, he sends his disappointment through their touch.

"But we can have dessert later," Nyota says, "back in your apartment."

The market deli is actually a good choice, Spock thinks as they make their way down the crowded aisle toward the food coolers and tables set out in the back. His stock of foodstuffs at his apartment is particularly low right now—not that he would mind missing a meal, but Nyota would object, a trait she shares with his mother.

A human proclivity, perhaps?

They each select vegetarian wraps and Nyota chooses one of the Vulcan fruit juices that the owner has recently started stocking.

"Since he put them here for you, you really should buy one now and then," she says, leaning forward over the small round table where she has unwrapped her sandwich.

"I do not like _kaasa_ juice," Spock says. This is an argument they have had before and they fall predictably into their roles.

"But he went to a lot of trouble—"

"He made a calculated risk based on an inadequate understanding of his customer base—"

"He's doing it to be nice—"

"His emotional reasons are immaterial. He is doing it to make money—"

With a flourish, Nyota upends the carton of juice and swigs it, barely concealing her distaste.

"I am so ready for dessert," she says, hopping up and leaving Spock to pick up their trash and trail behind her.

Later, as they lie together in the tangled sheets of his bed, they discover what they had not known, that both had visited the infirmary today.

"I wish you could have seen that doctor's face when I told him I needed Vulcan _and_ human antigen therapy," Nyota says, her voice muffled in Spock's shoulder, her hair cascading across her face. "He probably thought I could give an Orion a run for the money."

For an uneasy moment Spock replays his own conversation with Dr. Puri. Nothing definitive ties the two visits together. The doctor would have to have an unusual interest to even try—or to make that sort of leap of logic.

He calms his heartbeat and pulls Nyota tighter to him.

He doesn't think about Dr. Puri for eight months. They do not meet again until Captain Pike introduces Spock as his new first officer to the rest of his senior staff—and Dr. Puri will make the same mistake he made today, holding out his hand in a gesture of friendship, his fingers extending for a few seconds in the air.

Spock, of course, will recall with perfect clarity the parallel actions. If Dr. Puri recalls Spock at all, he doesn't let on. They could be perfect strangers, so genuine is his enthusiasm when they are introduced.

Or the good doctor could be covering their professional association with a kind of pretended amnesia, sparing Spock any embarrassment about working with someone who knows his personal medical history.

And later still—582 days, 3 hours, and 12 minutes after he sat in examination room two—Spock will hear Leonard McCoy say that deck six has collapsed, killing Dr. Puri, two nurses, and a crew member who had reported to sick bay when her hand was burned during Nero's attack on the _Enterprise_. In that moment Spock will pause, realizing—not from logic, nor with any rational part of his brain, but with an intuition so intense that he does not doubt its accuracy—that Dr. Puri had known everything and had said nothing.

But that is almost two years away—not right now in early spring when the first wildflowers are starting to bloom along the edge of the paved paths that crisscross the Academy grounds, not now as he leans his face into Nyota's hair and breathes in her scent, shifting his shoulder and calculating how much longer they can lie here before she needs to slip away unobtrusively back to her dorm—but somewhere in the distant unimagined, unimaginable future.

**A/N: This story follows "What We Think We Know" and The Red Tagine trilogy, but it can be read as a stand alone story, too.  
**


	2. Perfume

**Disclaimer: I borrow but do not own.**

Nyota Uhura does not bail on her girlfriends. She does not jump ship. Never.

Not even when she wants to.

She hates women who treat each other this way, like understudies always expecting to move on to a starring role in a play called _My Boyfriend and Me_. Or like apprentices merely passing time learning the art of friendship, waiting for real employment with someone else, someone usually more…male.

When she goes with a girlfriend to a club, to a dance, to a café, she expects to leave with her, too—and does not spend the evening scouring the crowd for someone _better_ , someone _else_.

Too many times she's been dressed and ready, her clutch in her hand, when a girlfriend has called her and canceled.

"Oh, Ny," one might say, "the guy from my quantum mechanics class asked me to dinner….if you don't mind—"

And of course she does mind, and says so.

She's not one of those women.

But tonight she wishes she could be.

Parrises squares is the last thing she really wants to be doing, but she promised Gaila several days ago that she would play on her team at the rec center. Normally she would have welcomed the athletic challenge—and the camaraderie, too—but tonight she needs to look over her notes from Admiral Spaulding's last xenolinguistics lecture. The odds are high that he will spring a surprise quiz tomorrow morning in class….

As she settles herself behind the master console and begins the shut down procedures for the language lab, Nyota grins at how she has slid, unawares, into weighing the odds of everything, the way Spock habitually calculates the future.

 _The odds are high_ ….

He would say that. _The odds are high that Admiral Spaulding will give the class a quiz in the morning_.

She smiles ruefully again in the empty room and finishes keying in the code that sets up the language acquisition algorithm. When the tutorial students pick up where they left off the next time they log in, the computer will have adjusted the rate of learning to account for today.

 _The odds are high that I will not do well on Admiral Spaulding's quiz if I play parrises squares tonight_ , she thinks.

But even as she turns off the master console and gathers up her backpack with a jerk, she knows it isn't true.

Her irritation isn't because she needs to study. Xenolinguistics is her forte. She will do well on any quiz Admiral Spaulding throws her way.

Her bad mood—and at last she acknowledges her annoyance—isn't because she is giving up an evening alone in her room studying, sprawled on top of the duvet of her single bed, her PADDs and books stacked precariously around her.

Given the opportunity to study for tomorrow's quiz—if Gaila for some unforeseen reason were to suddenly free her from her obligation to serve as the team's left forward defender—a position she dearly loves, by the way—Nyota knows, and finally admits, that she would not study at all.

At least, not xenolinguistics.

"If you are free tonight," Spock had said earlier in the afternoon as he was preparing to leave for his computer science class, "we could sample the cuisine at the new restaurant on Kober Street."

A meal with Spock—off campus, far from prying eyes! Her heart leapt up in excitement at the image of something almost normal, dinner and conversation, and then—well, they'd have to navigate the rest of the evening, wouldn't they? That was part of the fun of open-ended evenings—the almost exquisite agony of riding each moment forward to the next like a wave, trying to catch a glimpse of the horizon, trying to give the boat a gentle steer toward the shore.

And then, just as suddenly, her heart fell back into her chest. She had already promised Gaila that she would make up one of the four team members.

Backing out would be unthinkable. Or, not unthinkable, because she thought about it very long, very hard.

But unforgivable. Not that Gaila would be especially mad—Gaila, who has ditched Nyota more than once at some noisy occasion with an apologetic grin.

But Nyota does not bail on her girlfriends. Never. Even when she wants to.

And she really wants to.

Because she has to pass the computer science building on her way to the rec center, Nyota has agreed to meet Gaila there, in one of the labs near the office Spock shares with another professor. Since he teaches in both departments, Spock keeps office hours in both buildings—though more often than not, he works in the language building office.

As she locks the lab door and shifts her backpack to one shoulder, Nyota glances at the clock near the lift in the hall. Even if she hurries, she won't see him. Spock's computer science class has been over for half an hour, and he isn't one to linger after class chatting with his students.

All day the sky has been overcast, the clouds scudding fretfully across the gray sky. Nyota tucks her head into the wind and sighs, hurrying down the paved path until the computer science building looms large in her view.

Pushing open the outside door, Nyota looks reflexively down the hall to Spock's office. To her surprise, the light is on and the door open—and for a moment she is sure he must be there.

But no. _The odds are high_ that Professor Ott is there instead—the specialist in converting Riemann surface imagery into star diagrams who, according to Gaila, is one of the best instructors in the department.

Nyota turns left into the corridor leading to the lab where Gaila usually works.

From a distance she can see that the lights are off. That doesn't necessarily mean that the lab is empty, though—some students prefer no overhead lighting when working for long stretches on backlit computer screens—but as soon as she walks in, she can tell that no one is here. Indeed, all of the computers are off. The silence—and the darkness—are eerie.

Could she have gotten the date wrong?

For a moment Nyota feels a paradoxical rush of pleasure and worry—pleasure that she might be free after all, and worry that she might have gotten confused. Getting mixed up that way would be uncharacteristic—and troubling.

On the other hand, something could have delayed Gaila.

Or someone.

Without meaning to, Nyota thinks of Jim Kirk and his lopsided, goofy grin at breakfast this morning.

"Good morning, ladies," he had said, sliding into a seat beside Gaila. "Can I get you another cup of coffee?"

Before Gaila could answer, Nyota stood up, tray in hand, and frowned.

"I have to go, Gaila," she said, pointedly ignoring Kirk.

"Me, too," Kirk said, standing up. From the corner of her eye, Nyota saw him exchange a glance with Gaila.

Turning on her heel and taking her tray to the conveyor belt, Nyota could hear Kirk bobbing behind her.

"Hold up!" he said as she reached the outside door and started down the steps. "I need to ask you something! Hold up!"

The students entering the cafeteria eyed Nyota oddly, embarrassing her, and she swiveled around at the bottom of the steps and said, "Stop bothering me! I've already told you I'd do it."

"What? No—not that," Kirk said, his brow furrowed. "Yeah, I mean, thanks. When they reschedule the test I'll let you know. But no. I wanted to ask—I mean, Gaila and I wanted to ask you—to join us one evening for dinner."

At this Nyota was genuinely surprised. A dinner invitation from Gaila and Jim Kirk? Why hadn't Gaila said anything already? And why would they want her company anyway?

"No, thank you," she said, turning back around and heading across the pathway. "I have better things to do than to chaperone you and Gaila."

Feeling Kirk's fingers tapping her arm, Nyota slowed and looked back at him.

"No, no!" he said, laughing now. "I have a friend from home coming by this weekend. We thought you might want to double date—"

A jolt had juddered through her.

For a few seconds she couldn't think clearly. A date? With a friend of Jim Kirk's? A meal, a meeting—something so ordinary and gently pleasant, an evening with friends. Food and laughter—storytelling and flirting. Things she had enjoyed in the past.

She felt a little spasm of sorrow, of loss, in the pit of her stomach. Her footsteps faltered and she paused, looking quickly at Kirk's hopeful face, and then letting her gaze drift downward to her boots, noted idly a scuff she must have missed when she polished them last night.

"Thank you," she said slowly. "But, I….can't."

Bracing herself for a barrage of protests, Nyota was startled by Kirk's silence. Darting a glance at his face, she saw an odd look there, as if he was calculating something, or trying to recall something faint.

"Okay," he said at last, nodding quickly before turning and heading away.

If Gaila and Kirk are together now—well, parrises squares would be long forgotten. She might be on her own for real.

Nyota heads back down the hall and looks up in time to see her roommate standing at the end—and to her side, and slightly back, is Spock, his hands behind him in his professor's attitude, his expression carefully neutral.

Her own expression is harder to control.

"Commander," she says before giving Gaila her attention. "Fancy meeting both of you here."

"Thank you, Commander," Gaila says, looking up at Spock. Nyota raises her eyebrows— _they've been talking?_ In her private conversations with her roommate, she skirts the topic of Spock—not that she wants to lie to Gaila, and not that she doesn't trust her to keep her secrets.

But Gaila's cheerful teasing for so many months when Nyota herself couldn't see what was happening—well, it seems more prudent now to go on with the fiction that she and Spock are instructor and aide only, nothing more. That way if anyone were to ask Gaila what she knows—

"Cadet Farlijah-Endef," Spock says, giving an almost imperceptible tilt of his head toward Gaila. "Cadet Uhura."

She _feels_ his eyes on her as much as she _sees_ them. A prickle of heat drifts from under her collar.

"We better hurry," Gaila says, stepping beside Nyota and hooking her arm through hers.

"Take care with your ankle," Spock calls after them as Gaila pulls her toward the door.

Her ankle. She could have bailed on Gaila because of her ankle. How many weeks ago had she hurt it—playing parrises squares, too—calling down imprecations from Leonard McCoy when she had finally limped into the infirmary, two days later.

"Let that be a lesson to you," he had said, wrapping her ankle a fraction too tight, like an exclamation point. "The next time you need a doctor, remember you don't have a medical degree."

But she hadn't taken the lesson to heart—had, in fact, completely forgotten her injured ankle until Spock's words of caution.

What had she read recently about the human capacity to ignore the obvious, to hide something from one's own consciousness?

She thinks about her ankle now, as she and Gaila head into the wind whipping across the campus, thinks about how it had given way unexpectedly in Spock's office. As if she is reliving the scene, she feels herself tumbling to the floor, her fall broken as Spock catches her.

Nothing extraordinary had happened then—not to an observer, not to someone who might have been passing by. Except that she had fallen not only into his arms but into a corner of his unguarded mind, seeing an image of herself illuminated and clear, not as she was in real time, but as she was, as she _is_ , in his fantasies.

A revelation….and he had known that she knew.

Like stepping into soft sand and feeling the earth shift beneath her.

For the first time, she dates their inevitable tumble towards each other as lovers to that instant when the bones and tendons of her ankle had given way.

That she hasn't traced the trajectory before now surprises her, makes her smile inwardly at the symbolism; _falling_ in love, indeed. And all because her heart was as giddy as the ligaments of her foot.

She should have pleaded her weakness to Gaila—"Dr. McCoy warned me," she could have said"—but instead she is rushing headlong toward the rec center, laughing out loud at the pleasure of running arm-in-arm with her friend.

She doesn't bail on girlfriends.

Instead, she struggles to accept the wobble of certain muscles, their tilt off axis, the way they send her spinning in unexpected directions.

X X X X X X X

"Well, if it isn't the teacher's pet."

Gaila casts an evil look at the speaker, a tall, angular cadet sitting slumped in an almost threadbare chair in the corner of the student lounge. Setting her backpack on the ground, Gaila slides her hands beneath her cascade of hair and flips the stray curls from under her uniform collar.

In the periphery of her vision she sees two other cadets react to her motion—two quiet men— _boys_ , really—who have never spoken to her directly but who seem to appear, with interesting regularity, in the cafeteria, the computer lounge, the lab, whenever Gaila is there.

She's never paid them much attention. Too young. Too inexperienced. Too…devoted. Not her type of conquest.

On the other hand—

The tall cadet is also watching her, though his gaze is not appreciative. More than once they have been head-to-head adversaries in programming competitions—and more than once Gaila has bested him, putting to rest the easy lie that she is beauty without brains.

No one makes that mistake anymore. Except perhaps the tall cadet, the one whose smoldering look is thinly disguised with a half smile.

Moving swiftly to the cooler and tugging open the door, Gaila dips and bobs, ostensibly looking for something on one of the lower shelves. After a moment, she shuts the door with an exaggerated sigh and turns around.

All three men are watching her, open-mouthed.

Even Cheers, her nemesis.

His real name isn't Cheers, of course. But it is the one Gaila has assigned him, refusing to grant him the favor of hearing the syllables of his name from her lips. _"Cheers_ " she says to him whenever she leaves the room, her fingers waggling goodbye.

 _I am always telling you farewell—that's how much you offend me_ , she seems to be saying.

Of the three cadets, Cheers is the first to recover, his mouth closing suddenly with a snap.

"Didn't see anything you wanted?" he says, a leer in his voice.

"Not here," Gaila retorts and is rewarded with his frown.

"Then why don't you head back to the office," Cheers mutters, his eyes dark and hooded. "Professor Ott's there—and that Vulcan Commander was asking for you. You've been busy—"

In two steps Gaila crosses the distance and stands over the chair where Cheers still sits, slumped. He at least has the good grace to look startled.

"What did you say!"

It isn't a question. Cheers blinks twice before raising his hands slowly, as if in surrender.

"Sorry, sorry!" he says. "I'm not saying anything you haven't already heard."

If she were back home on the Orion ring colony at her uncle's house, she would have slapped anyone who insulted her this way.

But she's not. She's a Starfleet cadet, lucky to have escaped the dreary servitude of colonial life—not slavery, or even sexual service—but something almost as limited, adoption by an uncle who treats her as a housemaid—a custom from the time when Orion women were routinely sold and bartered throughout the quadrant.

Gaila's siblings are content to stay behind, working the household chores and helping their uncle run his commercial interests.

She can think of few things worse.

Unless it is having to constantly defend herself against what people think they know about Orions. About her.

Cheers is right—she has heard it before—the suggestion that she sleeps her way to good grades, that she manipulates her professors with shameless abandon.

Not that she couldn't. She has great faith in her sexual prowess—no apologies about that, no secret desire to be something other than she is, to be _human_.

But she wouldn't. However she might tease and pleasure a fellow cadet, she would never approach a professor. Her career is on the line, her place here. She would not do anything to jeopardize her future as an officer. Or to play to stereotype.

Until recently, this was one of the things she had in common with Nyota—their fierce commitment to a vision of themselves in Starfleet.

Not that Nyota's vision has wavered—not exactly—but her path certainly has.

 _This is Commander Spock's fault_ , Gaila thinks.

For months Gaila has been a distant observer, like someone consigned to the edge of a dance floor. At first she had not been certain that Nyota felt anything more than admiration for the Vulcan teacher—though she certainly talked about him more often than was normal, recounting the debates from his class in exasperating detail.

When Nyota decided to apply as his teaching assistant, Gaila was mildly alarmed, commenting that her roommie was obsessed with Spock. Nyota had laughed at the time and said, "He probably won't hire me anyway," but he had—without much deliberation, apparently, or at least with great speed.

Still, those first weeks as his assistant were reassuring—Nyota's exhaustion and odd silences good omens that the Commander was as difficult to work for as his reputation suggested.

At times, in fact, Gaila felt anger on Nyota's behalf—the work load was exceptional, the hours long.

So when had the relationship started sliding into something else? Or rather, why had it? Gaila already knew when.

Rain had been falling on and off that day in February—the redolence of the new oak leaves and the wet pine making someone as sensitive to smells as an Orion positively jubilant. Although Nyota had been scheduled to work in the language lab until 1700, she was late returning to the dorm, and at first Gaila wondered if she were waiting out the rain.

Gaila remembers this because she was forced to entertain Jarrod while they waited.

He had shown up at their dorm without any warning—a handsome human who introduced himself as Nyota's boyfriend.

"Well, not the current one," he said, flashing the kind of grin at Gaila that she was used to flashing at other people.

 _This might prove interesting_ , Gaila thought. A human aphorism came to mind: _Finders keepers._

However, within a few minutes she was bored—not that Jarrod wasn't attractive, and certainly not that he wasn't attracted to her—but he was on a mission to see Nyota for some reason, and any ardor Gaila might have felt was cooled by his obvious intentions.

When Nyota was more than an hour late, Gaila began signaling her comm.

"I can't figure out why she's not answering," Gaila said, frowning slightly. "Unless she's left her comm in the Commander's office while they are working in the lab."

"The Commander?" Jarrod asked, and Gaila nodded. Something in Jarrod's tone nagged at the edge of her consciousness, but she dismissed it a few minutes later when Nyota finally arrived, drenched in rain, her clothes bedraggled, her hair completely undone.

And wafting the aroma of sex.

Gaila was so shocked that for a moment she couldn't speak.

There was Nyota's normal scent—faint citrus and floral. But underneath that, the rich muskiness of bodies pressed together, the tang of salt and saliva, the pollen-like perfume of semen.

And most surprising of all, the aroma Gaila knows is Commander Spock's, the metallic odor of copper, the perplexing scent of some unidentifiable earthy spice used to preserve fruit. In the past she's caught his fragrance on Nyota's clothes, in her hair—like smoke clinging to the molecules of skin and fabric.

But that night—

They'd crossed over.

"Look who's here!" she said, frantically covering her distress. Nyota looked as flabbergasted as Gaila felt, though if Jarrod was aware, he didn't show it.

_This had to stop. She had to help them end this._

Here was an opportunity to set things right, to get Nyota back on track. With a rush, Gaila dressed and prepared to leave her with her former boyfriend—her extremely alluring, attentive former boyfriend—for the evening.

The attempt was futile.

Gaila knew this a morning or two later, when she had and Nyota were exiting the cafeteria after breakfast and ran into the Commander unexpectedly.

There they stood, the three of them at the foot of the stairs, Nyota's orange and lavender fragrance deepening into something richly purple as the Commander greeted them. Shifting her weight onto her left foot, Gaila had leaned forward, catching a whiff of the Commander's usual faint smell of winter apples blooming into something spicier, something more…erotic.

For an hour after they parted Gaila had puzzled over the change—their unconscious pheromones drifting to each other, speaking of desire and sex, but of something else, too—something rarely sensed this way.

And at last she had understood that the scent was something _more,_ something _beyond_.

What humans call affection, or attachment, or love.

Since then she has said less than she probably should have, uncertain if she has any right, or even any desire, to interrupt what might be a genuine relationship.

What would that feel like, she wonders. To love someone—to say the words and mean more than a brief transaction of the flesh? She rolls the syllables in her mouth and says them softly from time to time, imagining saying them to someone in earnest, someone like Jim Kirk, for instance.

She stares down at the cruel, good-looking face of Cheers. Stepping away from his chair, she says, "Excuse me."

Later tonight after parrises squares she will come to the computer lab and slip in a worm. Nothing really evil, just a program that searches out Cheers' course transcript and changes his posted grades.

Or maybe erases his course work altogether. Erasing him, so to speak, from the cadet corps.

He'll track it down eventually and accuse her—and she might even draw a reprimand—but the time he will waste, the desperate irritation he will feel—

In public she won't dignify him with interest, with a response. Leaning down to pick up her backpack, she hears him say, "Commander Spock was asking for you earlier. I guess your roommate isn't enough woman for him—"

Forget her resolution to walk away, to ignore his provocation, to seek payback quietly, privately. In an instant Gaila is at her uncle's compound again, one of many children living there, her mother working off-world, her father unknown. The pecking order was vicious—the older children hazing the younger ones into submission, and Gaila, one of the youngest, harangued and occasionally physically beaten when she lagged in her duties.

Until she had learned to lead with her left.

Slight as she was, she was athletic and spry—and when she jumped forward, her fist leading the way, she could knock someone twice her size off balance.

Once she had broken a cousin's nose.

With a sickening crunch, her knuckle makes contact with Cheers' spongy cheek. Nothing breaks—she's pretty sure—but he will definitely have a mark there for a day or two.

Outraged, he leaps to his feet and bounces on his heels like a street brawler.

"You fucking whore!" he shouts. "You Orion whore!"

Crouching, her fists raised, Gaila waits.

For a moment she hears nothing but her own labored breathing. In the distance she sees the two young cadets, watching her warily.

At last Cheers rubs his cheek with the back of his hand and ducks past her, into the hall. For a moment longer Gaila waits, and then she stands upright and straightens her bag on her shoulders.

"May I see you?"

Jumping visibly, Gaila sees Commander Spock standing in the doorway, his expression impossible to read. _Did he see that? Did he hear what Cheers had said about her, about Nyota?_

Her heart beats an irregular tattoo as she follows him to the office he shares with Professor Ott.

"Please sit," he says, motioning to a black plastic chair. He lowers himself into the chair behind the desk and opens a folder there.

_Perhaps this isn't about the fight. Perhaps he didn't hear anything after all._

"Professor Ott says you are the most talented programmer he has ever taught," Commander Spock says without preamble, and Gaila is momentarily thrown off. Professor Ott? Why is Professor Ott talking to Spock about her work? She's never had the Commander for a course. Could he have been curious for some reason?

She nods once and folds her hands in her lap.

Looking down, she notices a scrape across two of her knuckles.

"You may not be aware," Spock continues, "that one of my chief responsibilities for this department is the annual upgrade of the _Kobayashi Maru_ program."

Again Gaila nods, dumbly. _Why is he telling her this?_

"The visual editor I worked with last year graduated, and I am looking for a replacement. Professor Ott recommended you, Cadet. If you are interested."

Unable to make her brain work for a minute, Gaila sits, stupidly, silently. Work on the _Kobayashi Maru_ programming team? A third year cadet? For the most demanding professor in the department?

Her face splits into a smile.

"Yes," she says, "I'd be interested!"

This is what she needs—a validation of her ability, an affirmation of who she is. She gives Spock what she hopes he knows is a look of gratitude. Without a word, he stands and she does, too. The interview is obviously over.

They make their way into the hall just as Nyota comes from the other end.

"Commander," Nyota says, and Gaila inhales deeply. Warmth and anticipation—and desire—fill the air.

 _Oh, Ny,_ Gaila thinks, a pang squeezing her heart _, this can't end well._

"Thank you, Commander," Gaila says, looking up at Spock, watching his face struggle to hide the feelings his aroma freely acknowledges.

"Cadet Farlijah-Endef," Spock says, giving an almost imperceptible tilt of his head toward Gaila. "Cadet Uhura."

When his eyes travel to Nyota, the intensity of their arousal almost overwhelms Gaila.

"We better hurry," she says, stepping beside Nyota and hooking her arm through hers.

"Take care with your ankle," she hears Spock call, his voice a distant echo of the fragrance eddying around them.

X X X X X X X

He's been watching the construction at the gutted building for weeks now, measuring the progress against the stated opening date.

 _Coming Soon_ , the sign proclaims in letters large enough to be seen by passing motorists—a typical marketing ploy, Spock notes. _Vegetarian Cuisine_.

In smaller letters, a placard propped in the window promises _Off-World Delicacies_ and _Flavors From Across the Galaxy_.

Hyperbole, certainly.

But interesting, nevertheless.

The construction site caught his eye because it is across the street from the art gallery where he bought his _asenoi_ —and where, to his surprise, Nyota had later bought him a tea mug made by the same potter.

Something his mother said to him recently sent him back to the gallery with an idea of buying a gift for Nyota—a vague notion not typical for him, the planner, a person not given to impulse buys….or to impulsive behavior of any kind.

And yet…and yet—

His relationship with Nyota is a contradiction of that assessment of himself, proof positive of his ability to step into an abyss without consideration of the inevitable fall.

He isn't quite sure why his subspace video conversation with his mother led him to the gallery on Kober Street—except that he had commented off-handedly about a scarf she was wearing, one he had never seen before, and she remarked, equally off-handedly, that Sarek had given it to her.

"I don't know why," she said when Spock asked her the reason. "Sometimes he does that—just brings me a sursy."

At his quizzical frown, Amanda had laughed.

"That's what my Great Aunt Matilda always called it," she said. "You know, a little gift. A little something that shows—"

"I remember the term," Spock said, still frowning. "I…wasn't aware that Father often gave them to you."

Instead of answering, Amanda had laughed again.

Until he found himself examining the pottery on display at the front of the gallery, Spock had not fully realized that he was looking for a _sursy_ for Nyota, and further, that he knew exactly what it should be.

A mug of her own, made by the same potter who made his.

Not a matching mug—nothing so sentimental as that. But the idea that a potter can connect them through clay touched and fired—

He finds the idea strangely satisfying. Symmetrical. Even territorial—an image of their tea cups sitting side by side in his cupboard bringing him a measure of—if not pleasure, then contentment.

His plan had been to present the mug at dinner after his computer science class. The new restaurant across from the gallery would be ideal, a table at one of the large glass windows along the front of the building affording an opportunity to point to the place of origin.

"A sursy for you," he imagined saying, "from the gallery."

The odds were high Nyota would not know the term _sursy_ —a regionalism of the Southern United States—and she would enjoy learning what it meant.

Later they would take the mug back to his apartment to try out a cup of tea.

Or not.

That she might already have a commitment for the evening had not occurred to him.

Not that he doesn't have commitments of his own. The _Kobayashi Maru_ scenario, for instance. Although cadets have always had the option of retaking the test, Spock can't recall any such requests—until now.

And because someone wants to retake it, the test parameters have to change. Not just the normal updates Spock oversees, but a re-imaging of the entire simulation.

He really should spend this evening working on the _Kobayashi Maru_. Or better yet, finding someone to help him with it.

Gaila Farlijah-Endef is the clear front runner. Professor Ott can't sing her praises high enough, though as far as Spock can tell, humans are notoriously unreliable where Orions are concerned.

Squirming, he thinks about his cousin Chris' onetime girlfriend, C'rina, whose mother was Orion. Spock hadn't thought he was drawn to her—until he suddenly was. If Chris hadn't interrupted them one day—

But that was years ago, before Spock had come to Starfleet. He's been in Cadet Farlijah-Endef's presence many times and has never felt anything at all for her. Or from her. And her programming skills _are_ exceptional—

Or instead of working, he could go on to his apartment and spend an extra hour in meditation. A light supper and then some time practicing his _ka'athyra_ —he hasn't touched it lately.

Or he could read instead. Vulcan poetry, perhaps. The book he unwittingly gave Nyota that she keeps at his apartment, ancient erotica, the pages careworn where they have read them to each other.

The idea of being in his apartment tonight without Nyota is gloomy, like watching the fog rolling across the bay at twilight. No light supper then, nor meditation nor music nor poetry.

If he stays a few minutes longer now that his computer science class is over, he can catch Cadet Farlijah-Endef before she heads to the rec center and her game of parrises squares.

The lab at the end of the hall across from the student lounge is the largest and the one most students prefer, so Spock heads there. His footsteps echo on the linoleum, though not so loud that he can't hear voices from the lounge.

"You fucking whore! You Orion whore!"

Spock recognizes the voice immediately, a gifted cadet whose erratic personal behavior threatens to derail him from Starfleet. At Spock's insistence, a counselor has met with him twice, both times to caution him about pejorative comments he has made towards women—one to Nyota outside Spock's office where she was waiting for Gaila to finish up a lab.

Tipping his head into the room, he sees Gaila there now, her aggressive stance obvious, her fists raised in the air.

Two cadets sit across the room, immobile. The third—the one Spock had heard yelling earlier—rushes past him into the hall.

"May I see you?"

When Nyota's roommate jumps, Spock realizes belatedly that he has startled her. There's no help for it now. He ducks back into the hall and hears her following him to his office.

"Please sit," he says, moving behind his desk and picking up the folder Professor Ott has left for him to look over.

"Professor Ott says you are the most talented programmer he has ever taught," Spock says. Although he doesn't expect the cadet to speak, he is surprised that she is so subdued—almost as if she is injured, or upset.

_The argument in the lounge._

Spock knows more about Orions than many of his colleagues, yet what he knows doesn't come close to helping him sort out what the cadet needs now.

" _You Orion whore!"_

An insult, surely, particularly for the social classes that have eschewed the slave trade Orions are known for.

Nyota would know how to interpret the cadet's downcast gaze, the sheen of sweat across her brow.

The odds are high that she is upset. What to do about it, however, is a mystery.

"You may not be aware," Spock continues, "that one of my chief responsibilities for this department is the annual upgrade of the _Kobayashi Maru_ program."

He waits for a beat but she doesn't look up.

"The visual editor I worked with last year graduated, and I am looking for a replacement. Professor Ott recommended you, Cadet. If you are interested."

She must not be. For 27 seconds she does nothing at all. Already, Spock is composing a new request to Professor Ott.

 _The cadet you recommended was not amenable to my proposal_ , he will say.

Before he can imagine anything else, her face splits into a smile.

"Yes," she says, "I'd be interested!"

A tendril of uneasiness snakes its way into Spock's consciousness. _Will she always be this difficult to read?_ He was certain she was going to turn him down—and then this. He stands and she does, too.

They make their way into the hall just as Nyota comes from the other end.

"Commander," Nyota says, and her roommate finally looks up at him.

"Thank you, Commander," she says, though he isn't certain why. The job, after all, will be a demanding one, perhaps even unpleasant. Thanking him with such limited data is premature at best.

"Cadet Farlijah-Endef," Spock says, giving an almost imperceptible tilt of his head toward Gaila. "Cadet Uhura."

He feels a stab of disappointment and tamps down the longing he always feels when he sees Nyota. At moments like this, he is grateful for his Vulcan training.

"We better hurry," Gaila says, pulling Nyota away from him, their arms hooked together.

A worry for their safety—parrises squares has a high injury rate—prompts him to call out a warning.

Nyota looks over her shoulder at him, sending him a mildly sorrowful, apologetic note— _I don't want to leave you_ , she seems to be saying—but as she faces forward he hears her laughter.

He watches the two women as they hurry to the door, Nyota's warm brown arm laced through Gaila's dusky green one.

Something in that image—a human and an off-worlder—lifts his spirits, makes him feel hopeful.

Another night will work better for the sursy. He doesn't have to hurry.

They have all the time in the world.

**A/N: Comments and kudos are like sursies!**


	3. The Deli

**Disclaimer: I do not profit from borrowing these characters.**

With an exaggerated tap of her finger, Nyota powers down her computer and raises her arms over her head, stretching. By turning to the left she can see Spock sitting behind his office desk, grading student assignments.

Or trying to. Her movements have obviously captured his attention. From the corner of her eye she can see him watching her. _Good._

For the past two days something has been out of kilter between them. Not that Spock is ever easy to read, but lately he has seemed…more removed. Remote. Not chilly or unfriendly, but something harder to pinpoint.

 _Afraid_. Yes, that's closer to what she means. _Spooked._

By what is happening between them?

Her heart gives a little lurch and she raises her hand, pressing her fingers to her sternum. Is he worried? Or sorry? Or ready to put an end to this—whatever it is?

They have to talk. Already once today she tried to lure him outside of the office, hoping that a walk across campus to get lunch at the cafeteria would give them enough privacy to talk about something other than work.

But despite her encouragement, Spock had been adamant that he did not want to break at midday for a meal.

"Please go ahead," he had told her, barely looking up from a PADD he was marking. "My time will be better spent finishing these assignments."

 _His time would be better spent?_ She had to remind herself not to take offense, not to hear the words as having anything more than a literal meaning. His time _would_ be better spent finishing up his work than larking about with her over a limp salad in the crowded cafeteria.

Still, she had to talk herself out of the hurt.

When she came back from lunch, Spock was as focused as he had been earlier, and as uncommunicative.

"Would you like some tea?" she asked before she settled back at her computer, but he shook his head and barely glanced up.

For the rest of the afternoon one part of her brain was replaying the last two days, parsing their conversations, mining them for clues to his withdrawal. They haven't argued or disagreed about anything—not even in jest. Spock's schedule has been exceptionally busy, but when is it not?

At last she circles around to the inescapable conclusion. His quietude, his averting his eyes, his physical containment of his own body when he is near her—his arms clasped to his side, his legs tucked away under his desk—all began with the bruise.

She hadn't noticed it at first—a thumbprint darkening the inside of her wrist. They were sitting in the break room at one of the small tables and she had turned her arm, reaching to pick up her mug, when she saw it.

For a moment she paused, considering. In a flash she knew where it was from—and she smiled, remembering their unusually enthusiastic lovemaking the night before.

She can count on one hand the number of times she and Spock have been intimate. In so many ways they are still strangers to each other, still feeling their way forward—particularly after the night they were caught in a downpour and had ended up for the first time in Spock's bed, carried by a heated urgency that had been building for months.

Their minds had touched as well, the mental passion almost more than Nyota could bear—and since then Spock has been careful not to meld with her when they explore each other sexually.

"Perhaps later," he said when she asked, and she is content to wait. Losing herself in his mind had been overwhelming, almost suffocating. For now they have enough to find out—the tempo and strokes, the motions that each finds most satisfying.

 _But the bruise._ Where his hand had circled her wrist, had pressed her arm up over her head, fluttering her heart and shortening her breath with excitement. His other arm slid under the small of her back and she twisted the fingers of her free hand into his hair.

His arm tightened around her almost convulsively and she struggled not to gasp. Then they found a rhythm that was at first so languorous that Nyota felt she was falling from a great distance. Spock gripped her wrist as if he was afraid to let her go—and he held her that way until they were both breathless and exhausted at last.

Once when she was a young girl she had gone with her family to the home of a friend who owned horses. For much of the afternoon she stood on the sidelines, watching the horses—a bay mare and her colt—ambling and grazing in the pasture.

"Want to ride her?" her mother's friend had finally asked, and Nyota accepted immediately. The mare was skittish but finally allowed the owner to grab her halter and attach a lead rope. In another minute Nyota scrambled up, her knees pressed firmly against the stiff hair of the horse's back, her hands splayed on either side of the mare's neck.

Even now she can recall the sensation of sitting on the horse as her mother's friend tugged on the rope and walked her around in a circle.

_Great strength, barely contained._

That such a large animal would allow itself to be humbled this way—a tiny girl on her back, a mere rope leading her onward—was amazing and thrilling. Through her knees Nyota could feel the horse's muscles rippling as she walked. As the mare's head bobbed in time to her forward cadence, Nyota leaned into her and imagined herself half of a centaur.

More than once this image has come to mind when she runs her hand over Spock's shoulder or presses her thigh against his own. He is so much stronger than a human that sometimes he pins her down, playfully, with one hand.

_Great strength, barely contained._

The bruise was almost invisible in the low light of the break room, but when Nyota looked up, she watched Spock's eyes travel from her wrist to her face. His expression darkened at once—and she knew he knew.

"It's nothing," she said, smiling and holding up her arm. "See?"

He had become unnaturally still, his hand arrested in the act of reaching for his tea mug.

She heard his breath rush out.

Looking around at the empty break room, Nyota said, "Really. It's not your fault."

It was a lie—and a transparent one at that.

But she couldn't think how to say what was closer to the truth, that bruises would be part of _what_ they are—would have to be because of _who_ they are.

Since then he's stayed back, stayed apart.

That has to be it. She lowers her arms and looks at her wrist, where the bruise is fading.

"I'm famished," she says, standing and making her way across to Spock's desk. He says nothing, though he is watching her.

"So," she continues, "how about something to eat?"

Motioning to the PADDs on his desk, Spock says, "I have not completed my grading."

"I see that," Nyota says, "but you don't have to finish them all now. Let's get something to eat."

"Go ahead," Spock says, and Nyota feels the beginnings of true annoyance. _This is ridiculous._

Leaning forward fractionally and lowering her voice, she says, "Are you avoiding me?"

She smiles, quickly, to soften her words, but she can tell that Spock is startled to be called out this way.

"Nyota," he says, and then stumbles to a halt. His hesitation makes her heart race with worry. He really might be trying to end this.

"If it's about the bruise—"

"I hurt you unintentionally," he says, and before she can interrupt, he adds, "and I can offer no guarantee that I will not hurt you again."

For a moment she stands there beside his desk, silent. What can she say?

"Please," she says at last, "let's go talk about this. You are hurting me now, by holding back. I can bear anything…except that."

Motionless for a moment, he seems about to refuse her, but then he nods once and stands.

"How about the deli?" she asks as he locks the office door behind them. "Since I had lunch at the cafeteria."

Tilting one eyebrow up at her, Spock gives her what she knows is a skeptical look—and for good reason. The real purpose in getting him to the market deli instead of going to the cafeteria is to finagle an invitation to his apartment. The cafeteria is near her dorm. The market deli is next to the faculty housing.

"If you insist," he says, his tone almost teasing. _What a relief to hear something lighter in his voice._

"Oh, I do," she says, grinning as they head down the stairs.

At this time of the evening the deli is rarely busy—another reason to choose it over the crowded cafeteria. When they walk in, the bell over the door tinkles, a friendly sound that alerts the young Indian man behind the counter and causes him to look in their direction.

Recently Nyota has struck up several conversations with the young man—Vijay—and his cousin, Arun, who actually owns the business and who alternates shifts. When she is with Spock neither man says much. But when she stops in alone to buy a drink or a sandwich, as she has several times when making her way back across the campus after being at Spock's apartment, she makes a point of speaking to whoever is working.

Vijay, in particular, seems to welcome her company. Not quite as tall as Nyota, Vijay is handsome in a severe way, with skin as dark as hers and glossy black hair cut short and spiky. During their most recent conversation he had completely changed the way she saw him, confiding that he began as a Starfleet cadet a year ago but washed out during basic training. 65% of every incoming class is gone by the first midterm. It is no disgrace and no dishonor, just a measure of the difficulty of meeting the stringent requirements—but before she had known that he was a recruit, Nyota had dismissed Vijay as an uneducated clerk—and her assumption makes her ashamed each time she greets him now.

Vijay glances up from the newspadd he is reading and nods in their direction.

"Anything good in the cooler?" Nyota calls, and he says, "Vegetarian wraps fresh today."

As they thread their way down the aisle lined with groceries to the cooler in the back of the store, Nyota watches Spock's gait stiffen slightly as Vijay says, "Let me know if you need anything from the deli."

They find the wraps and sit at one of the round tables pushed to the side near the glass deli counter. For a few minutes they are occupied with unwrapping their sandwiches and deciding on something to drink. As usual, Nyota picks Vulcan _kaasa_ juice, not because she has any fondness for it, but out of gratitude to Vijay and Arun for stocking it—a tribute to Spock's patronage.

Now that they are here, facing each other, Nyota is uncertain how to begin. Finally she pulls back her sleeve and rubs her thumb over the fading bruise.

"We need to talk," she says, and Spock nods.

"So it would seem."

"I know you are upset—"

She senses Spock's uneasiness immediately—the set of his shoulders, the rate of his breathing—but it can't be helped. He _is_ upset, and pretending otherwise isn't helpful.

"But this is just a bruise. Nothing more."

"I could have hurt you more seriously," Spock says, his brows furrowed, his eyes cast down. "This may serve as a warning—"

"Stop it!" she says, her voice sounding angrier than she intends. She reaches her hand across the table and runs her fingers over his forearm.

"Look at me," she says, and slowly Spock lifts his eyes. "We can figure this out. Just…don't pull away. If you do…."

She lets her words drift off as she sees Vijay moving down the aisle, straightening a display of cereal cartons. In a few moments he moves away and she says, "There has to be a way to work this out. Humans and Vulcans _can_ be together— _you_ are proof of that."

Her look is so mock earnest and her voice so syrupy that anyone other than Spock would have laughed. As she watches, the glacier in his expression starts to melt.

Just as suddenly, his expression shifts, once more somber.

"Humans and Vulcans _may_ ," he says, "but I am not…"

His pause catches her by surprise. There it is again, his discomfort with who he is, despite all his seeming self-assurance. Nyota's hand is still resting on his arm. She draws her fingers across his sleeve until he looks away.

"Let's go make some tea," she says, "and talk about this."

Pulling his arm from under her hand, Spock says, "Meditation might be a better use of my time right now."

 _A better use of his time._ Again she feels weighed in the balance and found wanting.

"You can meditate," she says, pushing back her chair. "After tea. After we talk. Or before, if you insist. I'll sit quietly and wait."

She anticipates his protest. Of _course_ she knows that meditation is done in private—that her presence would be too distracting. They've had _that_ conversation before, too.

But he says nothing, merely rises, gathering the papers of their wraps and collapsing them into a ball.

"I'll get this," Nyota says, moving past Spock to the counter near the door. Vijay gives her a muted smile as she sidles up to the credit register, pressing her hand to the electronic reader.

"There," she says when the indicator flashes green—a signal that the credits have been transferred from her account to the market deli. Feeling Vijay's eyes on her, she broadcasts a grin his way and says, "Good luck with that call. Don't wait too long."

He flushes—as she knew he would. Such a serious young man—knocked off course into a future he hadn't planned. But he needs to let his father know that he's working with Arun now—not still at the Academy, a fiction he has allowed to continue for so long that he can't imagine how to break the news.

Or so he told her the last time they spoke at length.

"Your family will understand," she had said.

"They will be disappointed—"

"Well, of course they will," she said. "As you are. But you can't keep hiding it from them. You might be surprised at how supportive they are, how much relief you feel once you aren't carrying this secret around."

 _The weight of a secret._ She has no business giving advice about secrets.

Outside the market deli she stands next to Spock for a moment, surveying the distance across the commons to the faculty apartment building.

"Tea?"

She says it matter-of-factly, as if refusal is not an option.

"That might be…unwise," Spock says.

For a moment she lets her disappointment show. In the late afternoon light Spock's skin has a peculiar glow, dusky and oddly shadowed. She lets herself find pleasure in examining the cant of his ear, the upsweep of his brow, imagines tracing her fingertip along his jawline where she can see the hint of whiskers.

"Just tea," she says. "After that, I'll leave. Promise."

For a second they sway almost imperceptibly, and then in unison they turn and walk toward the apartment building.

She doesn't break promises, and she doesn't intend to break this one. They will have their tea, and she will leave.

Eventually.

Perhaps after they have explored other possibilities, other ways to fill the space between tea and goodbye.

X X X X X X X

Vijay Mehta looks up when the bell tinkles—the bell that he sometimes hears in his sleep. Although all day he has looked up automatically, hoping that the bell would usher _her_ in, he gives a start when she really does walk in, just ahead of the Vulcan Commander.

Her professor, her boss.

Sometimes the Commander comes alone to the market deli—usually late at night, and often for perishables—but more often lately he has been with _her_ —with Cadet Uhura, eating a quick meal before heading out together.

To go where? The faculty housing, clearly. On this corner of the campus, nothing else is close.

Vijay prefers not to imagine why Cadet Uhura goes with the Commander to the faculty housing. Or rather, he does imagine—against his will, and with some pain.

Perhaps the Commander has a project on his home computer that she is helping him organize. Or his office work space is not set up for two people and his apartment works out better. Or….something.

How lovely she is! The clean curve of her neck on display, her long ponytail swishing across her shoulders.

His appreciative glance ends when he sees the Commander eyeing him.

Is it his imagination, or does she see it too, the Vulcan's look like a lance?

"Anything good in the cooler?" Her voice shatters the tension. Grateful now that Arun had insisted he make up fresh wraps, he lets her know.

Three days ago—no, four—she had stopped by on her own one afternoon to buy some sweets—"A surprise for my roommate," she said, picking out several exotic confections—and he had, impulsively, offered her a glass of the chai he had brewed that morning.

"Um," she said, holding the paper cup he offered her to her nose and inhaling deeply. "Reminds me of home."

They had struck up a conversation about Africa and India, the relative merits of different teas, and then, to his astonishment, Vijay had heard himself telling the cadet something he has told almost no one.

"I came to San Francisco last July," he said, "to the Academy."

He watched her process the information, a slight frown flitting across her brow.

"You were a cadet?" she asked, and he nodded.

"Until October. But I fell behind in some of my course work and couldn't catch up. It's funny," he said, hurrying on before she could offer him unwanted sympathy, "back home I won the regional physics tournament. Twice. But here I couldn't…."

He felt himself drowning in her eyes.

"I'm sorry," she said softly. "I didn't know—"

Giving a shrug of his shoulder, he said, "It's okay. Arun let me move in with him for now. We're cousins, you see. He needs the help. And I don't mind. It gives me time to decide what I want to do."

"One of my friends from home," Cadet Uhura said, "started the same time I did. She left after our first midterms. And she's fine. She's working as an engineer for a new company."

"Making lots of money," Vijay said, and Cadet Uhura laughed.

"Oh, yes," she said. "And expecting a daughter soon. She's very glad she didn't stay in Starfleet."

At the time Vijay didn't question the story, but since then he's wondered if Cadet Uhura manufactured it to make him feel better. A lie to ease his disappointment. If she did…what a lovely thing to do.

As he opens shipping boxes and stacks cans of soup into a pyramid, Vijay keeps an eye on the cadet and the Commander. Their voices are so low that he can make out nothing they say—and they seem to be saying less than usual today.

On more than one occasion in the past he has overheard them talking about languages and the meaning of words—not a surprise, since Cadet Uhura told him that she is a communications major. Sometimes he catches drifts of an oddly guttural language—Vulcan, he presumes.

But today their silence stretches between them, as if they are unhappy.

The Commander might be, but his face is its usual inscrutable mask. _She,_ on the other hand, looks less unhappy than concerned. Or worried.

If the Commander has done something to upset her—

Vijay almost snorts at himself. _What false bravado._ What does he imagine he could do—to a Vulcan, no less? The Commander could squash him like a bug.

Stacking cartons of cereal in the center aisle, Vijay keeps an eye on the progress of the meal. They are finished now, and talking, still too softly for him to hear. To his shock he sees Cadet Uhura place her hand on the Commander's arm. Do Vulcans allow touching? Somehow he thought not. Casting about in his memory, Vijay recalls something someone told him once about Vulcans and telepathy. The details, unfortunately, have faded.

Does the Commander know what he is thinking? That might explain the dark looks sent this way from time to time.

Once the cereal has been put up, Vijay has no more excuses to linger in the aisle and he heads back to the front of the store. Cadet Uhura and the Commander are the only two customers, and before long they are ready to leave.

"I'll get this," the cadet says, and Vijay calls up the right screen for the credit register.

"There," she says when the indicator flashes green. Grinning, she leans slightly toward Vijay and says, "Good luck with that call. Don't wait too long."

The call. The one he considers making every day. The one he hasn't made yet, telling his father that he is not, in fact, still at the Academy. For four months he has been living with Arun and his family, sleeping on a pallet in the baby's room. At any other time it would be an intolerable situation—the baby less than a year old and often fretful at night.

And Arun's wife, Aarti, not resentful, exactly, but always watching him warily, as if she expects him to disappear one day with the family silver.

Cadet Uhura is right. The sooner he tells his father the truth, the easier it will be.

Tomorrow, perhaps, once he gets the details right—the order of events clear enough in his mind so he can say in the face of his father's disapproval, "I know this didn't work out, but I have other plans now. Better plans."

Lifting her arm in a wave, Cadet Uhura follows the Commander out the door, her step lighter than it had been, her mood changed.

Whatever troubled her has faded, or at least, moved to the background.

Vijay takes a deep breath and listens to the bell as the door shuts.

Her touch on the Commander's arm—Vijay pulls it back from his memory, examines it again with his almost eidetic vision. If he could only remember what it was he heard about Vulcans—it seems he would be able to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

He sees again the cadet rub her thumb across her wrist and twist her arm just so, her fingers resting near the Commander's hand.

And later, the Commander pulling his arm away. That must mean something.

And finally Vijay sees the cadet placing her palm on the credit reader, the sleeve of her uniform rucked up by the machine, and her wave as she left—a faint bruise winking from her wrist.

It could be from anything. An accidental fall, a session of PT too strenuous. Vijay knows the cadet plays parrises squares—a bruise would not be unusual after a game.

But with an intuitive leap he is sure these are not the reasons for the bruise. The Commander's look when she touched her wrist, the figurative distance between them, all point to something more sinister.

Should he tell someone? Someone at the Academy, maybe? And say what—that he knows nothing for certain but has a suspicion? Would anyone take him seriously? If he registered his concern anonymously?

For two hours he entertains himself with those musings, vacillating back and forth about doing anything at all.

At last he begins closing up the deli—emptying the coffee urns and the tea containers, checking the cooler and making a list for Arun about which wraps need to be replaced.

He debates bringing in the three small tables Arun sets outside each day when the weather is nice. The odds are that they will be fine if he leaves them there. The night is mild, and who would want to steal a table?

But if he doesn't bring them inside, Arun will call him lazy and get mad. With a sigh he props open the door and picks up the nearest table.

Something moves across his vision briefly—someone walking past the market deli on the paved pathway that crosses the commons. Almost as if he senses her presence, Vijay squints into the darkness and knows immediately that it is Cadet Uhura. And walking beside her, his arms tucked behind his back, is the Commander. Neither one looks in his direction, and in a moment they are gone, swallowed up by the night.

He could send an email to the dean of students. Not an allegation, exactly; a recommendation to investigate.

 _She_ would know he had sent it—and that idea gives him pause.

He turns off the lights in the back where the deli meats sit behind the glass counter and moves to the front, vacuuming the floor.

What does he know, really? Just that he should keep watching—keeping a vigil, as it were, to make sure she is safe.

Finishing the vacuuming and turning off the lights at the front, Vijay sees the Commander again, this time heading back across the commons, obviously on his way to his apartment.

 _I'm keeping an eye on you,_ he thinks. _If you are up to something, I will find out._

X X X X X X X X X

Spock programs his apartment to power down when he isn't there, so it is still cool and dark when he opens the door and stands aside for Nyota to enter. As soon as she steps over the threshold, the heat comes on with the lights, though Spock moves quickly to the temperature controls by the door and adjusts them for her.

"You don't have to," she says. "I've gotten used to your…heat."

A pun? And a suggestive one, at that. He tries not to look at her too closely. Already he feels his resolution to send her on her way after a cup of tea beginning to weaken.

Without looking in her direction he knows that she is following him to the kitchen, her soft footfalls stopping right behind him. Instead of turning around, he busies himself with filling the kettle and plugging it in.

Silently she opens the cabinet where he keeps the mugs, lifting two down to the counter. One, he notes, is the mug she bought for him, the one that matches his _asenoi_.

The other is the one he bought but has not yet given to her, the _sursy_ —made by the same potter.

"Where did you find this?" she says, picking up the mug and twirling it on her palm. "It almost matches yours."

He has a choice—continue ducking away, stepping back, or dealing with this head on. Suddenly an uncharacteristic weariness overwhelms him and he meets her eyes for the first time since they entered his apartment.

"It should," he says. "It was made by the same artist. I have not had a chance to give it to you yet."

At once her face lights up—and she reaches her hand to his cheek.

"Thank you!" she says, drawing her fingers across his lips. The sensation is so sharp that he closes his eyes and takes a breath. When he opens his eyes again she is staring at him, her hand poised near his face. Tentatively she runs her thumb along his bottom lip and he shivers.

"Nyota—"

She lowers her hand and he can breathe again.

"Do you want me to go?"

She is standing so close that he can hear her heartbeat.

"It would be better if you did," he says.

"You didn't answer my question. Do you _want_ me to go?"

Does he? If she stays he knows what he will do, what they will do. He's already so aroused that he hears a hitch in his breathing, feels his pulse roaring in his ears.

He teeters on the edge of control. And that, he realizes, is the source of his fear—the way he loses himself completely when he and Nyota are together, the way her body sways under his touch, unraveling him. The feel of her skin on his, her hair sliding through his fingers.

No other sexual experience has been this way—this absolute surrender to sensation. Always before with other partners he has been able to keep one part of his mind disengaged, separate, an observer only, motivated more by curiosity than by anything else.

But not with Nyota. When he touches her—when she touches him—he falls into a chasm of intense pleasure that borders on joy. His mind deserts him—and his body triumphs.

He's grateful she has only one bruise to show for his total loss of control. Even now—even standing here in the kitchen, fully clothed—he struggles not to pull her close enough to nip her ear—or to let his fingers drift to her face, searching out an entry into her mind.

"No," he says at last. "I do not want you to go."

Behind him the kettle begins to whistle, and Nyota laughs, bending forward and turning it off.

"What about tea?" she asks, raising her hand again to Spock's face while she leans into him. "Should we wait?"

He can hardly think.

He feels her fingers winding around his own, his legs moving woodenly underneath him as she leads him out of the kitchen and down the hall toward his bedroom.

When she starts to tug his shirt over his head he stops her, circling her wrists with his fingers.

"I may hurt you," he says. "We have to stop."

"I have an idea about that," she says, sliding her hands from his and letting them drift to the sides of his face, so fevered that her hands feel cold.

"Remember that first time," she says, and he knows she is not asking a question but making a reference point. "And how we…you…were in my thoughts. If you do that again—if we are… _together_ that way—then you won't hurt me. You will know what I'm feeling—and you can stop if I need you to."

She strokes his ears with her thumbs and his brain turns to cotton wool. Dimly he is aware that what she has said is perfectly logical—but at the moment he is unable to speak.

Without knowing how he gets there, he is suddenly in the bed, stripping off his clothes, watching Nyota through half-closed eyes unzipping her jumper and stepping out of it.

When he lies back she leans over him and he crooks his elbows, his hands raised toward her psi points.

"Wait," she says, "until I have found myself."

A curious metaphor—but he understands her instantly.

He puts his hands around her waist instead, and they begin the slow, inevitable calculus of heat and motion that never fails to amaze him. Flying apart seems a real possibility, and he struggles not to rush too far ahead of Nyota, letting his mind wander into the least interesting places he can conjure up, stalling as he waits for her signal that she has followed him to the precipice and is ready to tumble over with him.

And then he feels her hands reaching behind her, seeking out his own, and he slips his fingers in hers, the prickle of electricity between them. She raises his hands to her face and he reaches past the skin and muscles and bones until he is with her, in her consciousness, her mind even more beautiful than her body, lovely as it is all soaked with sweat and salty to his tongue.

She tumbles right away—and he allows himself a moment to feel what it is to be here, in this place of warmth and music—with snatches of memories of her mother just out of view, and distant hills dotted with trees almost where he can see them.

Remaining any longer would require a tantric discipline he does not have, and with a gasp, he lets go and falls.

They lie frozen, unwilling or unable to move.

"Let me look at you," Spock says finally, sitting up. Nyota's left hand is draped over his thigh and he picks it up, turning her wrist for closer examination.

"I'm fine," she says, laughing, but he continues his perusal, looking over each part of her carefully, clinically, until she protests that she is getting cold, pulling the duvet up, shuttering his view.

"As a scientist," he says, one eyebrow raised, "I have a responsibility to examine the results of my experiment."

With one tug he pulls the duvet back off the bed and Nyota squeals.

"Your interruption has compromised my examination," he says. "Now I must start over from the beginning."

Later, after they finally have tea, they walk past the market deli and Spock makes a mental note to stop by on his way back to get some yogurt for the morning. More than once Nyota has chastised him for being _unfriendly_ to people in his casual purview—store owners and cafeteria workers, and even his own students rarely getting more than a cursory comment or nod from him. His mother has the same complaint—and though he tries to be more responsive, he often needs prompting to remember to speak to someone, or to acknowledge them when they speak to him.

So he'll be _friendly_ when buys the yogurt. Not the way Nyota would be, asking personal questions and drawing out someone with her genuine interest.

But he might purchase an unwanted _kaasa_ juice—something that would make Nyota glad.

By the time he returns from walking her across campus to her dorm—the two of them chastely side by side, her arms crossed in front of her against the wind, his clasped behind his back—the market deli lights are off, the clerk obviously gone.

Tomorrow, then. He'll try to be _friendly_ tomorrow.

**A/N: Thanks to everyone who reads, and an extra special thanks to everyone who takes the time and trouble to review. Your words keep mine coming.**


	4. Father Knows Best

**Disclaimer: I wish I made money from shamelessly using these borrowed characters, but I don't.**

"Hurry up, hurry up," Nyota mutters under her breath, dancing lightly from one foot to the other. The line stretching in front of her is unusually long, snaking all the way from where she stands on the Presidio walkway near the bay to the security checkpoint outside the front door of the Federation legislative building.

"Cold?" Professor Artura asks, and Nyota nods, ducking her head into the wind. The Andorian leans forward and says something to the junior ambassador standing ahead of him in the line. The junior ambassador, his wispy white hair ruffled by the wind, turns and looks at Nyota.

"If you would like," he says with the characteristic Andorian lisp, "you may use my overcoat."

"Thank you," Nyota says, crossing her arms and tucking her hands to her side, "but my roommate is bringing my jacket. She should be here any minute."

Right on cue, Gaila waves from the top of the knoll and hurries forward, a large black swathe of material in her arms.

"What's this?" Nyota says, frowning. "I asked you to bring my jacket."

"Couldn't find it," Gaila says, grinning at Professor Artura. "If you weren't so messy, Ny—"

Nyota gives Gaila an evil look. Nyota's side of their shared dorm room is spotless. Gaila's side, on the other hand, looks like the aftermath of an earthquake—clothes, PADDs, shoes all mingled indiscriminately on the floor.

"This isn't mine," Nyota says, lifting the black coat from Gaila's arms.

"It's mine," Gaila says, "I think. Anyway, it's what I found. Go ahead and put it on."

With a skeptical grimace, Nyota slips her arms into the coat. At once she is swallowed by the bulky black material. She lifts one foot experimentally. The coat almost drags the ground.

"See," Gaila says, plucking the front of the coat, "fits perfectly."

Vaguely Nyota is aware that Professor Artura and the Andorian junior ambassador have been watching her, and she glances up and shrugs her shoulders.

"Very fetching," Professor Artura says. As she often does, Nyota feels that the professor is pulling her leg. _Fetching?_ In this huge lumpy coat? Hardly.

"Cadet Farlijah-Endef," Professor Artura says to Gaila, "are you also working during the meeting?"

"Not this time," she says brightly. "I'm just here for the plenary session."

Of course, Nyota thinks. All of the Academy cadets attend the plenary session of each quarterly legislative assembly of the Federation. No wonder the line to get in is so long.

As the line moves forward slowly, Nyota scans the crowd for Spock. He's taller than most of the cadets or the off-worlder ambassadors and their aides who are waiting, but she doesn't see him. Nor does she see any other Vulcans, though she knows they are here somewhere.

Including Ambassador Sarek. Her stomach gives a nervous flip.

Until this morning she hadn't known he was attending. Spock mentioned it casually as they were opening the language lab for an early tutorial.

"I'd like to meet him," Nyota said, and Spock paused, his hand hovering over the computer terminal he was turning on. His quiet—his hesitation—surprised her. And hurt, too, though she tried not to show it. After all, Spock has hinted that his relationship with his father is strained. His hesitation may not be a reflection of his feelings about her so much as a commentary about his feelings about his father.

"I was going to ask you," he said at last, reaching down to finish his task at the terminal, "if you would be willing to serve as an aide for the Vulcan commission. It might be a good way to… meet my father."

At once she was sorry, and this time she didn't try to hide her disappointment.

"Oh!" she said, her right hand going to her mouth automatically. "I already told Professor Artura I'd help the Andorians with their simultaneous translations. The translator who came with them is ill today. Perhaps tomorrow?"

"Perhaps," Spock said. His voice was even and measured but Nyota noted disapproval in his tone. Lately he has chafed in the presence of Professor Artura, and though he has said nothing directly to Nyota, she can tell that the professor's jibes and kidding, his innuendos about them have begun to wear on Spock.

_Too close to home._

The phrase comes to her as she stands in line, hopping from foot to foot in the cold. Professor Artura's teasing is _too close to home_ —now that she and Spock are more than professor and teaching assistant….

She stops that train of thought and pulls Gaila's coat tighter.

Soon enough she is at the head of the line, handing her ID to the security guards and registering as an adjunct member of the Andorian ambassador's party. As Gaila heads to find a seat on the floor of the assembly room, Nyota follows the two Andorians to the area set aside for the Federation representatives. Several other Andorians are already there, one, Nyota is surprised to see, an Aenar, whose pale eyes and skin have a ghostly sheen.

"Cadet Uhura," Professor Artura says as he settles into his chair, "would you be so kind as to get the agenda folders? You can pick them up at the registration desk in the lobby."

"Of course," Nyota says, glad for an excuse to look around the room for the Vulcan delegation. Already the crowd is so large that making her way up the aisle means stopping and starting, waiting for people to find their places.

"I'll help you," Nyota hears behind her. The Aenar is only a few feet away, his sightless eyes open, his hand held out like he is holding a compass.

"Ambassador," Nyota says, stepping to the side and watching him catch up.

"Please," the Aenar says, "call me K'ev. And I am not an ambassador, just an observer. I'm afraid your participation today is on my behalf. The translator who is ill is my personal assistant."

Nyota takes a tentative step forward and K'ev moves with her. Nyota struggles to remember what she knows about the Aenar. Professor Artura has mentioned them in passing—their minority status in Andorian society, their reluctant participation in Federation affairs.

And their telepathy. Unlike their blue-skinned cousins, the Aenar are strong telepaths.

Darting a glance at K'ev's unblinking eyes, Nyota suppresses a shiver. Like other strong telepathic races, the Aenar eschew intrusion into the minds of sentient beings without their consent.

Still—

 _Shouldn't_ and _wouldn't_ are two different things.

The lobby is even more crowded than the assembly room and Nyota and K'ev are temporarily separated. Across the room Nyota sees a sign for the registration desk and she makes her way slowly to it.

"The agenda folders for the Andorian delegation," she says to the cadet manning the table. Without a word the cadet punches some information into a scanner and then motions to another cadet to hand Nyota two cardboard boxes, each the size of an old-fashioned hatbox. They aren't heavy, but they are awkward, and Nyota is grateful when K'ev sidles up beside her and takes one from her.

She lets him lead the way back across the room. As they turn down the corridor to the side entrance to the assembly room, a sudden rush of people almost knock her off her feet. In the distance she can see K'ev pass through the threshold. As she catches her balance and heads through the door, she feels herself spun around by someone already standing inside the assembly room.

"Here you are!"

A breathy male voice, and then a face, mottled purple and red, looms in her vision. Before she can react, she feels herself pressed backward by a sudden kiss.

Dropping the box, she tries to push the figure away with a shove, but he continues to nuzzle her face, his beard scratching her cheek.

"Stop!" she cries out, shoving her elbow down into the man's abdomen.

Suddenly she is free and her assailant is standing in front of her, breathing hard.

"I'm sorry!" he says, and Nyota rounds on him furiously.

"What are you doing!"

The man—a burly human with patchy brown hair—steps back, his hands dangling by his side, his face red and flushed.

"I…uh…I thought…you were someone else."

"Obviously!" Nyota says angrily, leaning over to pick up the box of agenda folders. The man bends down swiftly to beat her to it and almost topples over on her.

"Don't help me!"

But he ignores her, reaching out his hand and grabbing her arm to pull her up. As he does, Nyota looks at his fingers, big and hairy and as flushed as his face.

"I really am sorry!" the man says again, and Nyota nods briefly and darts into the crowd.

Completely rattled, at first she is so disoriented that she doesn't see the Andorians.

But as her heartbeat slows, she catches a glimpse of Professor Artura chatting with K'ev, still standing in the aisle, the box in his hand.

Professor Artura takes the box from her and opens it, handing the thin agenda folders to each of the Andorians already seated. Looking around once more at the crowded room, Nyota takes her place between the two men and opens her own folder.

The agenda lists the usual greetings and introductions that will make up most of the plenary session, with a banquet tonight. The real work of the assembly won't start until tomorrow. Then the ambassadors will spend the next three days discussing such issues as how to respond to the plague on Denus Argentia, whether or not to admit three new applicants for membership into the Federation, how to broker peace among two warring member worlds.

Wiping the back of her hand across her mouth, Nyota looks around the room for the man who kissed her. _He must be crazy_ , she thinks. She tries again to settle her disquiet by reading the detailed précis of the agenda—to no avail. The feel of the unwanted kiss lingers on her lips—and though she rubs her fingers roughly across her face, she can't get the image of the man out of her mind.

"Cadet," Professor Artura says, and Nyota is aware that he has spoken her name several times in succession.

"Yes," she says, focusing her attention. His antennae are tipped toward her, his expression concerned.

"You seem distressed."

"No, no," she says quickly. "I'm fine."

For a moment Professor Artura is silent. Then he says, "If you don't mind—"

He hands her a PADD designed for translators, with separate screens for the different languages and a scrolling commentary across the bottom. Virtual buttons along the sides allow the translator to annotate the translations or call up dictionaries. Nyota's task is to highlight anything that will need editing later for the archives.

"All of the members of the delegation are fluent in Standard," the professor had told her when he asked her to help. "But this report will go back to the citizens on the home world. It has to be recorded accurately—and none of the delegation will have time while we are in negotiations."

Ordinarily working at a legislative session would be interesting—even thrilling. Today, however, Nyota feels nonplussed—and not, she realizes, just because of the strange, random kiss—an obvious case of mistaken identity—but because of her conversation with Spock that morning in the lab.

If only he had asked her earlier to work with the Vulcan delegation! She could have spent the day getting to know Spock's father, sideways, obtusely, almost stealthily. Getting to know him—letting him know _her_ —as an individual first. Before he suspects that she might be anything more.

And there, she puts her finger at last on the real source of her unease. What would Sarek of Vulcan think of her? Sarek, whose reputation is even more formidable than his son's?

Spock has shared nothing about whatever he may have told his father—or his mother—about her. Surely not much. Not that his father would tell anyone, but if he is as bound to tradition, as committed to rules and regulations as she assumes an ambassador must be, then he would not condone his son's risking his career this way.

As the president of the legislature walks to the lectern to open the session, Nyota shrugs off Gaila's heavy black coat and smushes it into a lump. How hot it is in the room already—with so many people finally seated. Why did she ever think she needed her jacket?

The introductions are thankfully brief and the president outlines the proposed agenda. A few members add to it. The Horshan delegation makes their usual protest about humanoid hegemony.

Through it all Nyota keeps one eye on the scrolling commentary on the PADD. As the speakers pause, she looks around for Spock, spotting him at last near the stage, sitting with a large group of Vulcans. Most are women—their elaborate scarves and richly embroidered robes more colorful than the somber dark tunics of the men.

Immediately Nyota knows which one is Sarek. As tall as Spock but stockier, he holds himself with the same rigid posture. A family trait, or typical of Vulcans in general? Nyota isn't sure.

Because the Andorians are sitting further back, she can't see Sarek's face, except occasionally in profile. His ears, she notes, are not like Spock's at all—but are thinner and angled differently.

She feels herself flush with a sudden image of Spock's ear, running her thumb and forefinger on either side of the pinna, ending at the tilted point, watching Spock's eyes close of their own accord, the slightest frown line between his eyes as he struggles not to give in too swiftly….

The heat in the room is oppressive. She wipes her brow with her hand.

"Hot?" Professor Artura says quietly, and Nyota almost giggles, remembering how two hours ago he had asked her if she was cold—in exactly that same tone of voice, his head tilted forward the same way.

"I…uh…I think I need some water," she says, handing him the translation PADD and standing up. For a moment she is too lightheaded to walk, but then she regains her equilibrium as she heads up the aisle.

The lobby is cooler. With relief she accepts a cup of water from a cadet manning a table set up with refreshments.

Pulling her comm from her pocket, she scrolls through her messages and sees one from Spock—a note saying he will look for her after the afternoon session.

At least he isn't still annoyed about her working with Professor Artura, if he was, in fact, annoyed. He might simply have been preoccupied. When she sees him, she can ask.

 _If she remembers._ Right now she just wants to sit for a minute in the cool air and not think about anything.

Soon the mental fog lifts and she gets back up.

The rest of the afternoon is a mix of tedium and surprise. For the most part the delegates approve the agenda without much discussion, but an occasional outburst from overly impassioned attendees ricochets around the room.

Through it all Nyota beavers away on the translation, occasionally asking Professor Artura or K'ev to corroborate a word choice.

When the president chimes the bell to signal the end of the session, Nyota is too tired at first to rise.

"If you don't mind," she tells Professor Artura, "I'm going to sit here for a little while and catch my breath.

He tips his antennae toward her—a gesture that can indicate amusement or worry, Nyota decides.

"My assistant sent me a note that the medics are treating her illness," K'ev says. "If she is unable to return to work tomorrow, would you be willing to do the translation work in her place?"

Is she? Nyota has to think. Right now all she wants to do is get out of the heat and rest. Or walk around in the evening air. Anything other than sit longer in a cushioned chair. Another day bent over a PADD scrambling to compose Andorian prose is not an exciting prospect.

And Sarek. If she is free tomorrow she might get to work with the Vulcans and meet Spock's father.

Why is she having so much trouble deciding what to do?

"You are tired," K'ev says, and Nyota has the impression that he is not making a simple intuitive leap but feels her exhaustion with her. "Please do not concern yourself about tomorrow."

"No, really—"

"If we need you," Professor Artura interjects, "I will contact you. Thank you, Cadet, for your service to Andoria today."

Dimly she is aware that the Professor and the other Andorians are walking away—and then something catches the edge of her consciousness and she looks up into Spock's eyes.

He is standing as he often does in public, ramrod straight, his head tilted slightly to the left, his hands clasped behind his back.

"Cadet Uhura."

"Commander," she says, gathering up Gaila's coat. She stays in her seat another beat. A human would have stepped forward to offer a hand. Spock doesn't move.

Behind him she can see the other Vulcans talking and collecting their things. Sarek is there, too—looking in this direction. Nyota forces herself to stand up.

"I am accompanying my father to dinner," Spock says, his voice more formal than she is used to hearing. _His way of saying she is not invited to join them?_ Right now the idea of meeting the ambassador is too daunting. She needs to be clear-headed when she does, and she is too tired to think straight.

"The banquet?"

"If he chooses," Spock says. "At any rate I should be free later."

He's asking her something. She's sure of it. But at the moment she can't parse out exactly what.

"Cadet," Spock says, stepping closer, and Nyota raises her hand to stop him.

"Yes," she says. "Call me when you are free."

Gaila's coat is so heavy—almost too heavy to carry in her arms. How does anyone wear a coat like this?

"Do you need—" he begins, but with a burst of energy she smiles.

"I'm fine," she says. "Really. Good luck with…everything."

It's a joke they share—her wishing him luck before he has time to protest. A belief in luck, he likes to say, is a human tendency to impose a narrative on a random universe.

Without looking she knows that he is still standing in the aisle watching her go, his eyes lingering on her as she threads her way through the few people ambling toward the door.

But when she turns around at the end of the aisle to grant him a farewell nod, he is not there. Indeed, she can't see him anywhere, nor any of the Vulcans. Apparently they exited near the stage when her back was turned.

If she weren't so tired she might be miffed. Not _miffed_ —for that sounds trivial and self-serving. _Disappointed_. Deeply.

What would have been the danger in introducing her as his teaching assistant?

Well, plenty. Her face would have given her away. _Teaching assistant, indeed_.

The glass door is cool to her hand as she pushes her way out of the legislative building. Instead of being cold, the wind now is refreshing, bracing, and Nyota tucks the unnecessary coat under her arm. Suddenly she is restless. A walk along the Presidio? Or dinner in the cafeteria?

The idea of the noise of students chatting and eating is unappealing and tiresome. All at once she is a deflated balloon, a cat needing a nap.

But food. She needs to eat. Walking as swiftly as she can across the campus, she heads to the market deli. A wrap. A quiet seat at one of the round tables Arun pulls outside every day. The image lures her forward.

Maybe Vijay will be there and she can ask about his plans to head home next month. It will be nice to hear someone talk about something other than treaties, legal rights, border refugees.

The coat unfurls in the wind and Nyota laughs at what she must look like, the black cloth catching the breeze like a kite.

Dinner is definitely called for. This….giddiness is unlike her.

_The deli. If she can get to the deli and get something to eat._

After that Spock may call, and they can compare their impressions of the session.

Shivering violently, she reels the coat in and slips her arms into the sleeves. Idly she notes a flush along one arm. Pulling out her other arm for examination, she sees that it is mottled as well, with tiny raised purple pinpricks.

A heat rash? If it doesn't go away by tomorrow, she will stop by the infirmary and have someone look at it. That nice doctor she saw the other day, maybe. What was his name? Dr. Puri. That nice Dr. Puri. The one who helped her set up her antigen routine.

She never thanked him properly, and she really should. She needs to let him know how important those antigen shots are, how they offer her peace of mind, how her relationship with Spock wouldn't be possible otherwise….doctors probably never hear those kinds of testimonials about their good work. She really ought to tell him, or send him a message on her comm.

If she weren't so tired right now she would.

X X X X X X X X X

In legislative sessions, Sarek is almost never called by his formal name. The off-worlders he knows best do not try to pronounce his family name, preferring instead to call him Sarek of Vulcan.

He doesn't mind. The more private his personal world, the better.

So he is uneasy about the public nature of what he must do now—even though the participants are both family.

All day he has divided his attention between the requirements of the plenary session—listening to the debates, voting in the initial agenda setting—and the anticipation of a trickier diplomacy—speaking to Spock and T'Rhea at dinner.

T'Rhea is his distant cousin by marriage—a widow whose husband died three years ago from a degenerative disease. She has no children, is in excellent health herself, and is a gifted civil engineer who works from time to time as an attaché at the Vulcan embassy.

She is not averse to living on Earth—or at least, Sarek has noted that unlike some of the other members of the diplomatic corps, she does not comment negatively about the climate, about humans, about the few times she has made extended stays in San Francisco.

Of course, Sarek muses, her silence in these matters may be a reflection of her sensitivity towards him rather than her genuine impressions. She may simply be careful not to cast aspersions on the homeworld of her cousin's wife.

Like most Vulcan women, T'Rhea is dressed in heavy embroidered robes, her head covered by a filmy scarf. Her thick clothes cannot hide her slender build and petite stature—and, Sarek reflects, watching her adjust her overcoat as she prepares to leave the legislative building at the end of the afternoon, her face is pleasing, her hair such a glossy black that it appears blue in the overhead light.

Getting Spock to consider her, however…

 _Tricky diplomacy_. Especially after the shame of the annulment—not that Spock has anything to be ashamed of. T'Pring's conduct in the matter is shameful—her refusal to communicate with Spock when he was home, for instance. And Spock has hinted that she refused to see him earlier when she was traveling on Earth.

_The annulment had been necessary. Regret about the necessary is illogical._

Sarek has repeated this mantra since he helped Spock find a healer two months ago during his visit home—a visit neither Amanda nor Sarek had expected, though they were both glad to see their son and to help him end a relationship that was causing him distress.

And probably worse, though Spock has said nothing to him. Or to Amanda. Not that he is always forthcoming about his private life, but Sarek is mildly surprised that Spock has not said more.

"I think he has a young woman," Amanda said after Spock headed back to the Academy after the annulment, and Sarek listened skeptically to her reasons for her assumption.

"While he was here he called Earth seventeen times," she said and Sarek replied, "Spock has many colleagues at the Academy—"

"All seventeen calls were to the same private comm," she said, raising her chin in his direction. "Not one with an Academy prefix."

Sarek had to admit that such evidence was weighty. Though not proof, as he cautioned his wife, that Spock _had a young woman._

"What about his teaching assistant?" Amanda asked. "Spock said she was angry that he left Earth without telling her. That says something."

"It says that her work might have been impacted by his absence," Sarek reminded her, but Amanda was not impressed.

"During a school break? And furthermore, Spock told me that his assistant was worried when she didn't hear from him for several days. You have to agree that is suggestive."

"Suggestive of what, Amanda?" Sarek said, raising one eyebrow in what Amanda calls _the Vulcan exclamation point_.

"You know exactly what I mean," she said, darting him a glance as she hurried to the kitchen to attend a whistling teakettle.

And he had known, though he had said nothing more to Amanda.

If Spock _has a young woman_ —a human companion—it does not mean that he will have the help he needs when the time comes.

And _that_ , Sarek acknowledges to himself, is the real source of his worry about his son.

A human companion might be nothing more than a temporary dalliance—an entertainment. Sarek has no objections.

But long term?

"Rather than attend the banquet," Sarek says to Spock as they exit the building after the plenary session, "I would prefer eating at a restaurant your mother and I often enjoy when we are here."

"As you wish," Spock says at once, his eyes cast down like a proper obedient son. Illogical to see his actions as anything more than they appear—as an ironic message, perhaps—yet Sarek can't help but feel that Spock is agreeing against his will.

He has no time to consider further. He turns to T'Rhea and says, "And you, cousin? Will you join us?"

"I would be honored," she says, nodding, and Sarek feels a weight lift from his shoulders.

The restaurant is close to the Federation complex, a tiny room seating fewer than 20 diners. The food, however, is very fresh, the wait staff attentive, and both Spock and T'Rhea strike up an extended conversation about upcoming infrastructure projects on which T'Rhea has been invited to consult.

As Sarek finishes his salad and pours himself some of the fermented tea that is the specialty of the restaurant, he wills himself to relax—to prepare to turn the conversation to more serious matters.

How to start? That is always to key to a successful negotiation—and when one of the parties involved is resistant….

The odds are high that Spock will resist another betrothal. Sarek and Amanda have had words about it—arguing late into the night before he left for Earth this time, her words still ringing in his memory.

"Haven't you learned anything?" she demanded. "Even T'Pau told you to leave him to his own choices—"

"What is so amiss about planning for the future?" Sarek said, watching Amanda shake her head.

She had no reply.

There is no adequate reply—Sarek is right to be concerned.

He expects Spock to resist, but he cannot predict T'Rhea's reaction. She is older than Spock, and more settled in her career, and though she would benefit financially in a betrothal, she may have…other objections.

The idea shakes Sarek's usual equanimity.

 _Other objections._ Objections to Spock's human heritage.

Watching the two of them talking amiably over dinner, Sarek dismisses the possibility. She will approve. She has no reason not to.

Setting his cup on the table, Sarek prepares to broach the topic at last. Negotiations must start somewhere.

But T'Rhea pushes her chair back from the table and stands.

"Please excuse me," she says without preamble. "My mother needs my attention. I'll see myself back to my quarters."

And with that she is gone.

Looking across the table, Sarek meets Spock's eyes in understanding. As soon as he had returned to Earth from his last trip home, Spock had been hurt in a hover bus accident, and both Sarek and Amanda had known at once through their bond. T'Rhea's mother is elderly and frail and living alone in Shi'Kahr. She may need her daughter's assistance.

Suddenly the restaurant feels like a misstep, particularly now that he will need to speak to Spock alone.

"Can we," Sarek says, signaling to the waiter to bring their check, "retire to your apartment? I have matters I wish to discuss with you in private."

As he hands the waiter his credit chit, Sarek sees Spock's expression go flatter than usual. _Not a good sign._

"As you wish," Spock says, and Sarek has the same impression that he had earlier, that his son is wary in his compliance.

Spock's apartment is not far from the restaurant. His hands clasped behind his back, Sarek watches Spock key their entrance into the building and then into the apartment, the first door on the left.

Not surprisingly, the apartment is spartan and neat, though Sarek notes a half-filled tea mug still sitting on the table beside the sofa.

Motioning to his father to have a seat, Spock whisks the cup to the kitchen and Sarek hears him filling the kettle. For several minutes Sarek sits on the sofa, scanning the room as Spock makes tea.

The bookshelf along one wall contains several books Sarek gave Spock years ago—a revelation that both pleases and surprises him. Several pictures are propped up among the books—photographs of their garden at home, and one particularly aesthetically harmonious picture of Amanda and Spock, standing side-by-side, the open door to the house in the background.

Other than these few things, nothing reveals his life here. No pictures of companions. No souvenirs or artifacts from travels.

Sarek feels his heart give a little lurch.

He hopes his son is not lonely.

" _I think he has a young woman,"_ Amanda had said, but if he does, the bare apartment contradicts that idea.

Sarek thinks about the young woman he saw today—the teaching assistant. Could she be the young woman Amanda is convinced has a personal relationship with their son? Spock had spoken with her briefly at the conclusion of the plenary session, neither his posture nor his expression indicating anything other than a professional connection. They had exchanged only a few words, their eye contact brief.

Spock comes from the kitchen holding two similar mugs, both rough to the touch and obviously hand-made. Sarek takes one and blows across the top of the tea, waiting for some internal signal to tell him when to begin.

"Your mother," he says after taking a sip, "worries about you."

He looks up in time to see a glimmer of amusement cross Spock's features _. A good sign._ He waits for Spock to reply.

"A trait common to human mothers," Spock says, and Sarek adds, "All mothers."

For another minute they sip their tea in silence, and then Sarek says, "I…wanted to talk to you about…your future."

At once he senses Spock's hackles going up. The gentle pulse of their bond closes, like a door pushed to, and Spock puts his cup down on the table and laces his fingers together.

"My future?"

"In hindsight," Sarek says, setting his own mug down, "T'Pring was an unsuitable choice. It would be understandable if, given what has happened, you feel resentment about your bonding."

He stops and searches Spock's face for a hint to his reaction. Spock frowns slightly and says, "I do not resent the bonding. I never have."

For a moment Spock seems to pull within himself, and then he says, "In fact, I welcomed it. It made me feel less—"

"Alone?" Sarek says, thinking of the steadiness of Amanda's presence in his mind.

"Unusual," Spock says.

A rush of sorrow catches Sarek off guard. Usually his control is stronger, but Spock's tone pierces him, reminding him of all the times Amanda cried at night after putting their son to bed, weeping into her pillow, into Sarek's shoulder, about the injustices Spock faced daily as a child.

"Then perhaps you will be agreeable," Sarek says, steadying his voice, "to a new bonding. With T'Rhea. Every indication is that she would be—"

"You have spoken to her?"

 _Anger._ And disbelief? Sarek isn't sure. He struggles not to sigh.

"I have not," he says, and Spock leans away. "I wanted to speak to you first."

"Father," Spock says, "I have no interest in bonding with T'Rhea or anyone. I realize that you are…concerned, but I assure you—"

"You cannot know how frightening it is," Sarek says, his brows furrowed, "to face—"

And here he falters, unable to bring himself to say the words.

His inability to speak opens a dam in Spock. In a rush, the younger man says, "I know that you are rightfully worried for me. And I appreciate your concern. But it is illogical to make an untenable choice based on a future that may not happen—"

Here Sarek looks up, ready to protest, but Spock heads him off.

"—may not happen, Father. You cannot know. No one can."

The bitterness in Spock's voice is unmistakable. The old hurt. His legacy to his son.

 _Regret about what cannot be changed is illogical_ , he thinks.

Now it is his turn to say, "As you wish," glancing away.

"Thank you for the tea," he says, standing, and Spock stands too, his arms close to his side, his hands behind him. Making his way slowly to the door, Sarek considers what else he can say, what might change Spock's mind.

But his logic fails him. And his feelings compel him to silence.

" _I think he has a young woman_ ," Amanda had said, and now Sarek recognizes the hopefulness in her pronouncement. She will quiz him when he returns, wanting news.

The news will disappoint her.

There is no young woman.

There is no one at all.

X X X X X X X X

By luck—or more accurately, because of where the light fixtures in the hallway of the apartment building are placed—a ray of light falls on the mug on the side table as soon as Spock swings open the door. It jumps to his attention like a beacon.

Nyota has been here. Half expecting to see her when he steps through the door, Spock looks around the living area.

Nothing else is out of place. Just the tea mug, cool to his touch when he lifts it and takes it to the kitchen sink, out of his father's view.

He has an idea what his father wants to discuss. Twice since the annulment his father has made oblique comments in passing about _making new arrangements_. Both times they were speaking via the subspace comm—tail ends of longer conversations with his mother. Both times he was able to sidestep the issue, wishing his parents well before hastily signing off.

The dinner with T'Rhea had been so transparently cobbled together that Spock had actually been embarrassed. If T'Rhea had felt anything similar, she was too gracious to show it.

On the walk here from the restaurant, Spock deliberated about how to stop the matchmaking he is sure his father will continue otherwise.

He can't tell him about Nyota.

And yet—

For a moment he feels the burden of the lie, the secret, and gives into a yearning that he allows himself only in his unguarded moments—the relief he would feel if their relationship could be openly expressed.

What folly to indulge in such a fantasy.

What… _danger_ ….to think this way. He might slip.

When his father speaks at last, Spock slows his breathing and holds onto his anger as best he can. His father does not mean to meddle—and is genuinely worried, an uneasy admission for any Vulcan.

And then Sarek says, "You cannot know how frightening it is to face—" and Spock trembles once with a memory of his father slipping into the agitation of early _pon farr_ years ago.

Restlessness, and more alarming, the mindless, blank-eyed irritation that made his father a stranger to him. With unwanted clarity he recalls the flight to a neighbor's house, the three days of stretching out through the bond to his parents, confused by their distance and their silence while he waited to be allowed to come back home.

His future? The healers have already said he will have trouble with reproduction because of his hybrid genes. Perhaps he will be spared the ancient drives as well.

"I know that you are rightfully worried for me. And I appreciate your concern. But it is illogical to make an untenable choice based on a future that may not happen, Father. You cannot know. No one can."

He knows his father is not mollified, that he will try to have this conversation again.

When he locks the door after his father leaves, Spock is overcome with weariness.

It isn't too late to call Nyota. He picks up his comm but hesitates. After the plenary session she had looked tired—or more than tired, ill. If he calls, he may wake her.

She must have come to the apartment and made some tea while she waited for him. Would calling her and waking her be better than not calling at all? He has no idea.

Taking the comm with him as he walks back to his bedroom, Spock breathes out deeply. Meditation is in order, is necessary. Beyond necessary. He feels his way into the dark bedroom, moving to the corner where his _asenoi_ rests on its tripod.

Something indefinable stops him, raising the hair on the back of his neck.

"Lights," he says. "Nyota?"

The small lamp beside the bed flickers on and he sees Nyota stretched across his bed, still fully clothed in her jumper and boots.

In the dim light she looks oddly flushed, as if a rash has crept up her neck and across her cheeks. Leaning one knee to the bed, Spock reaches out and touches her forehead with the pads of his fingers. She stirs and sighs, opening her eyes.

"Here you are," she says, her voice husky from sleep.

"Why are you here?"

Even as he says it, Spock realizes that his words could be misconstrued as a criticism. In the past he has gotten crossways with Nyota with questions asked too bluntly—but she yawns and says, "I was waiting for you."

The irritation he had felt with his father ebbs away—as does his resolve to spend time meditating in front of his _asenoi._

"Come here," Nyota says, reaching up and tugging his ear, and he pulls himself onto the bed and stretches out beside her. She slides her arms around him and he feels his heart speed up.

He shifts his position so that his thigh straddles hers and she sighs again.

"Where have you been?" she says, closing her eyes and nipping his cheek with a light bite.

He closes his eyes in response and holds himself motionless, willing himself to slow down.

"With my father," he says after a moment. "An evening meal."

"Um," Nyota says, her voice muffled, and Spock's eyes fly open in alarm. In the dim light the circles under her eyes are dark, her skin faintly moist. He runs his hand over her brow again and brushes against her consciousness.

Unlike times in the past when her mind was full of sound and light, tonight he senses little more than exhaustion, and a longing for dark and quiet.

Abashed that he has let his own sexual needs press him forward, Spock rolls back, freeing his arm.

"Um," Nyota murmurs again, her hands curling together under her chin, her eyes still closed.

She needs to sleep. And he needs to meditate.

Carefully sliding backward until he can stand up from the bed, Spock moves to the corner of the room and lights his _asenoi_. The light plays across the ceiling and offers a focal point as he sits cross-legged in front of it, slowing his breathing and trying to let his uncomfortable arousal drift away.

Within minutes he knows it is useless. Each time Nyota takes a breath he aches to touch her. He imagines climbing back into the bed, rousing her from her sleep with his fingers on her cheek, or kissing her like some Terran prince in a story.

Instead, he gently perches on the edge of the bed, watching her sleep. If he takes her boots off she will be more comfortable—and so he unzips the left one first and slides it down and off, the image of her foot, freed and delicate, almost undoing him. He gathers his breath and takes off her other boot.

For exactly three minutes he allows himself the guilty pleasure of examining her unawares, his eyes traveling up the curve of her knee to where her thigh disappears under the hem of her skirt. A flush along her neck slipping under her collar, her jumper rucked up around her shoulder, her hair splayed out behind her—he admires each part separately, aiming for an objective assessment, failing miserably.

He could sit here all night and watch her, he feels that grateful.

But he doesn't. Tomorrow will be as busy a day as today—more so, because he will have to assist the Vulcan delegates in the morning before leaving to teach an afternoon class that he has not yet prepared for.

Pulling the duvet up and over Nyota, he heads back down the hall to the living area.

Stretching out on the sofa, he thinks about how his father had sat here an hour ago and wonders where he is now. Or rather, what he is doing. Preparing for tomorrow, most likely, reading over the notes for the morning session, the difficult discussion with his son already compartmentalized in some acreage of his mind.

How fortunate, Spock thinks, that Sarek didn't discover Nyota here. Spock can't imagine how he could explain her asleep on his bed—other than by telling the truth.

And what exactly is that truth? That he is breaking—willfully and in full cognizance of the consequences—Starfleet rules against fraternization. Rules that cost another professor his position recently.

But the deeper truth—the one he doesn't yet have words for—is that he doesn't care. Rules or no rules, he chooses this.

His father would not approve—might even feel constrained to tell someone in authority. Might even, Spock thinks, be glad to see his son drummed out of the service, forced to return to Vulcan, to the life he had planned for him after all.

Spock folds his arms behind his head and lets himself feel a measure of relief.

Checking his internal clock, he muses. 2134. Not very late by human standards.

In an hour he will wake Nyota and walk her back to her dorm. She can't stay the night. No use inviting gossip from the neighbors, some who are also instructors at the Academy.

Or he might gently nudge her awake in a few minutes, swamping her with his heat and motion. Even here, while he is prone on the sofa, the sounds of her occasional murmurs, her intake of breath, the slow exhalations, keep him aware of how close she is, how available. His need for her is almost painful.

"Be kind," his mother told him more than once. "Other people have needs, too."

The book of Vulcan poetry is still in his room. He doesn't need to see the page to remember the line.

_I ravish you in my dreams._

A disappointment if poetry is all he can have tonight.

She needs to sleep. And they need to be cautious.

The poetry will have to do.

Not getting caught when Sarek was here...they've already been granted one reprieve today. Asking for more, as Nyota might phrase it, would be pushing their luck.

A/N: Clueless dads.

The next chapter follows the action in this one pretty closely, taking place the next day. Stay tuned!


	5. The Infirmary, Again

**Disclaimer: I neither own nor profit from writing about these characters.**

"You look terrible!"

Gaila's voice is almost as annoying as the sudden light.

"Turn it off," Nyota mutters, trying—and failing—to lift her head from the pillow. She feels the bed shift as Gaila sits down beside her.

"Ny," Gaila says breathlessly, "you have to get up."

With a supreme effort, Nyota turns her face away from Gaila and covers her ear with her hand. She feels the bed shift again as Gaila leans over her.

"Girl," Gaila says, "I'm not kidding. You need to get up now. I'm taking you to the infirmary."

"Let me sleep," Nyota says, her words muffled by her cheek pressed flat.

"You've been asleep! You've missed breakfast _and_ lunch, and everyone is looking for you."

"What?"

Opening her eyes and struggling to sit up, Nyota feels Gaila's arm behind her back, shoving her upright.

"What time is it?"

"Here," Gaila says, standing up beside the bed so Nyota can slip her legs over the side. "Put on these boots."

Leaning forward, Nyota feels her head swim.

"Whoa," Gaila says, stooping down. "Let me help you."

Nyota leans against the wooden headboard as Gaila tugs her boots in place.

"Take my arm."

Nyota does, obediently, swaying on her feet.

"That's good," Gaila coos. "Go slow."

Feeling herself propelled forward, Nyota says, "Where are we going?"

"I told you," Gaila answers. "The infirmary. You have some sort of …rash."

"I do not," Nyota says, pulling back from Gaila's arm. "I'm just…tired."

She tries to turn back to her bed and is prevented by Gaila's hand on her arm.

"No, you don't," she says. "I promised Commander Spock I'd—"

"What does he want?" Nyota says, blinking her eyes against the overhead light.

"He called here," Gaila says, "several times. And that Andorian professor, too."

"Professor Artura? What did _he_ want?"

The cool wall is suddenly at her back, Gaila leaning her against it as she flips down the handle and tugs open the door.

"Everyone was worried when you didn't show up for work this morning," Gaila says, slipping her arm around Nyota's waist and walking her out the door and down the hall.

Later when she tries to remember, Nyota can't recall the trip across campus to the infirmary. Her memory shifts from being in the dorm to sitting in the examination room, a tall blonde nurse jotting notes on a handheld PADD.

"How long has she had this rash?" the nurse asks. _Something isn't right about that sentence._ How long has _she_ had it? _She?_ Before she can protest, she hears Gaila speaking.

"Since this morning, I think," Gaila says, and Nyota adds, "No. Since yesterday. I saw it yesterday. After the meeting."

She squints at the nurse whose head is surrounded by a nimbus.

"The light," Nyota says, waving her hand upward. "Can we turn off the light?"

"And you?" the nurse says to Gaila. "Do you have a rash?"

Nyota sees Gaila shake her head.

"You're sure?"

"I'd know if I had a rash!" Gaila says, and Nyota grimaces at the note of anger in her roommate's voice.

"The doctor will be with you shortly," the nurse says, snapping the stylus to the top of the PADD and exiting swiftly.

She doesn't have to wait long. Even through the closed door Nyota recognizes Leonard McCoy's voice.

"What's going on here?" he asks, darting a glance from the PADD in his hand to Gaila, perched in a chair near the door. Gaila motions to Nyota who is sitting slumped in the examination chair in the center of the room.

"Well, well," McCoy says, setting the PADD on the counter and turning to Nyota. "Cadet Uhura, I haven't seen you on the dance floor in some time."

Nyota tries to smile at his joke but gives up quickly. Against her will, her eyes close. She feels McCoy's hand lift her wrist, turning it from one side to the other, and then setting it down again. In a moment she feels her other wrist scrutinized the same way.

"How long's she been like this?"

She ought to say something—the question, after all, concerns her—but Nyota is too tired to respond. She hears Gaila pipe up.

"She says she saw the rash yesterday, but I don't know. Then this morning she wouldn't get out of bed."

Warm, rough fingers probe under her jaw and around her neck. In a moment she hears the whirring of some medical equipment—a tricorder, probably, though she doesn't open her eyes to confirm it.

"And you? You don't have any—"

"Why does everybody keep asking me that!"

Gaila again, exasperated. Nyota opens her mouth to say something but closes it. They can deal with each other without her intervention.

"Don't get your knickers in a twist," McCoy says. "Just trying to see if it's anything contagious. You're her roommate, right?"

"Yes," Nyota hears Gaila say, chastened.

"I'm going to run a blood test," McCoy says, "but I have an idea what this might be. Can you hang around awhile, wait for the results?"

 _Is he asking her?_ Nyota's eyes flutter open but McCoy is looking at Gaila.

"Of course," Gaila says. "She'll need me to get her back to the dorm."

"If you can't," he says, standing up and picking up the PADD from the counter, "I can go ahead and admit her to the hospital overnight."

"No!" Nyota says, and McCoy and Gaila swivel in her direction. "I have to get to work!"

"You aren't going anywhere today, young lady," McCoy says, "except back to bed."

Swinging her feet to the side of the chair, Nyota starts to rise.

"Or to a hospital room," McCoy says, pressing her back with one hand. "If you cooperate, I'll let your roommie take you home in a little while. If you argue with me—"

And here Nyota stifles the argument on her lips. McCoy's laid-back demeanor is a sham. He can go from mellow to stubborn in a heartbeat if he's angry or upset. She's watched him try to bluff his way through too many poker games—only to lose the last hand when he gave himself away.

She closes her eyes and grins at the memory of the last poker game—a weekly outing she occasionally joins, made up of a ragtag group of doctors, cadets, and townies who work in the bars close to the Academy. She hadn't bet much and hadn't stayed long—she never does—but she had been mightily entertained by the prodigious storytelling that made up the core of the evening.

 _How had she ever become part of that group?_ That memory is on the edge of her brain, but it skitters away, out of reach.

"But Commander Spock is expecting me! And Professor Artura. I told him I'd help today—"

"What's she talking about?" McCoy says, clearly directing his questions to Gaila.

"She works for Commander Spock," Gaila says. "She's his TA. And she was working for the Andorians yesterday at the legislative session—"

"She's a teaching assistant for an Andorian?" McCoy opens the door to the examining room and waves the blonde nurse in.

"No," Gaila says. "Commander Spock is a Vulcan, but she was helping out Professor Artura yesterday. He's in the language department at the Academy, but I think he works for the Andorian embassy, too. I'm not sure."

"Chapel, get a pathogen blood panel on the cadet here. Check the myecithin levels, too."

"Yes, doctor," Nyota hears the nurse say, her voice soothing, soft….

A pinprick on her finger—nothing, really—and then the lights finally dim and the chair she is in rotates back until she is almost flat on her back.

"This won't take long," the nurse says, and Gaila murmurs something indistinguishable.

A moment later Gaila's hand is on her shoulder, shaking her gently.

"Ny, you have to eat something."

She opens her eyes in surprise. When did they get back to the dorm? But here she is, in her bed, sticky and hot and still in her jumper. Her boots, she notes, are on the floor, as if she has dropped them there.

Sensing Gaila hovering to the side, Nyota sits up and lets her plump her pillow. She leans back and takes a sniff.

"Here," Gaila says, unscrewing a thermos and pouring the contents into a shallow bowl. "Be careful. It's hot."

"What is it?" Nyota says, taking the bowl from Gaila and tenting her knees. "It smells good."

Gaila inhales loudly. "Special delivery. Some sort of Vulcan soup."

 _Plomeek_ , Nyota thinks, eyeing the thick lavender liquid. She dips her spoon in experimentally.

Spock has made it for her once before, back when they were first sharing lunches with each other. The taste is sharp, almost crisp, with a hint of nutmeg. Different, though not unpleasant.

_A thoughtful thing to do. When did he have time?_

"What time is it?" she asks. The only outside sources of light are a small window that Gaila keeps curtained against the early morning sun and a skylight. Looking up, Nyota is shocked to see a deep navy sky.

"Late," Gaila says. "You were out of it all day."

"That rash—"

Nyota looks down at her wrist. The rash is still there but fading. Putting her spoon in the bowl, she runs her fingers up her neck. She can feel a few small bumps near her collarbone.

"The shot is working fast," Gaila says, watching Nyota.

"What shot?"

"Don't you remember? You hollered loud enough."

Nyota isn't sure if Gaila is teasing her or not. Picking up the spoon, she finishes eating the _plomeek_ soup. Something about it is different than she remembers—it is more delicately flavored, perhaps, or maybe she is simply famished after not eating all day.

Sitting up and eating are clearing her head. Slowly different things catch her attention—Gaila's pile of purple shoes thrown in the corner, muted laughter as someone walks down the hall, the empty thermos sitting on the bedside table. She leans slightly to the side and picks up the thermos, the motion catching Gaila's eye.

"Must be nice to have room service," Gaila says impishly. Nyota shoots her a frown.

"It's just soup," she says.

"Oh," Gaila says, laughing, "just soup. You should have seen the delivery boy."

There it is again, Gaila's teasing about Spock in a way that is both suggestive and overly-familiar—though Nyota has been careful not to say anything to her directly. She feels a twinge of guilt about it—she's not averse to girl talk, and Gaila is always quick to kiss and tell her own adventures—but too much is at stake if anyone finds out.

And not just that. The relationship with Spock isn't just a _fling_ —the kind of fun dating she has done in the past. This feels… _real_. Or more serious. Not something she wants to discuss lightly.

"I see him almost every day," Nyota says, pressing the release on the thermos and peering inside. _Nothing left. She had been hungry_.

Gaila reaches over and takes the thermos from her.

"You might see the _Commander_ almost every day, but that's not who brought this over."

"What do you mean?"

"I think it was the Ambassador himself," Gaila says, cutting her eyes to the thermos in her hand.

"But that—that doesn't make sense! You must be mistaken!"

Grinning, Gaila says, "Oh, I don't think so. Tall, older, distinguished Vulcan—looks rather like the Commander. I saw him with the Vulcan delegates yesterday. If he isn't the Ambassador, he's doing a great job impersonating him."

Too stunned to speak, Nyota straightens out her knees and pulls the coverlet up around her. A shiver wracks her for a moment, not because she is cold, but because Gaila's story is so confusing.

"I know how to solve this," she says, and Gaila twists around and stretches out, giving Nyota a playful shove to move her over in the bed. "When did this get delivered? Spock had a class to teach this afternoon. Maybe that's why someone else brought it."

"You mean," Gaila says, craning her head up, "why the Ambassador brought it? He came about 1700. Give or take a few minutes."

"Then you are definitely wrong!" Nyota says triumphantly. "The Commander's class is over at 1530. He would have been free after that. You just thought you saw the Ambassador."

"Ny," Gaila says, rolling her eyes, "I'm not blind! I saw him leave it at the front desk. It wasn't Commander Spock!"

With a huff, Nyota picks her comm from the bedside table and thumbs Spock's number. After several rings, his automated voice mail picks up—something rare. He usually answers right away.

Putting the comm on her lap, Nyota says, "I'll try again in a few minutes."

Gaila sits up, smirking, and Nyota says, "What? I have to thank him anyway."

"Whatever," she says, hopping up and sorting through a pile of scarves on the floor. Gingerly she lifts one up and drapes it around her shoulders, turning around for Nyota's inspection.

"Well?" she says, and Nyota looks up and frowns.

"You're going out? Now?"

"Why not?" Gaila says. "I've been cooped up here all day. And you look fine—or nearly so."

She grabs her purse from another pile on the floor and practically prances to the door.

"Besides," she says over her shoulder, "if you are going to talk to the Commander, you probably want some _privacy_."

At that Nyota laughs—though Gaila isn't wrong.

But two hours later when she drifts off to sleep, the comm still in her hand, she hasn't had a private conversation—or any conversation at all—with Spock. The last thing she hears before exhaustion overtakes her is his voice, recorded and stiff, asking her to leave a message.

X X X X X X X

"If that's not Kentucky straight bourbon, take it right back," McCoy says as Christine Chapel walks into his office with a mug in her hand.

"You know it isn't," she says pertly—too pertly, McCoy thinks. He gives her his trademark look, the one he knows the nurses have a name for…though he hasn't talked any of them into letting him know what it is.

"What is it?" he says, sniffing with what he hopes comes across as dismissive disgust. "Tea or some such nonsense, probably."

"Soup," Christine says, setting the mug in front of him on the desk. "You haven't eaten all day."

"Been too damn busy," McCoy grouses. From the corner of his eye he sees Christine pivot around and leave the room. What tomfoolery. Soup, indeed.

He leans over the mug and takes another sniff, this time an appreciative one. The smell of the soup wafts up into his nose and he looks around to make sure Christine is really gone before picking up the mug and taking a sip.

No wonder he hasn't had time to eat. The stack of patient folders on his desk is three inches high, a normal load on a weekday in the infirmary. Thank goodness no one's been dragged in from a bar fight. At least not yet. Those nights are the worst, when cadets get tipsy at the local bars.

McCoy takes another sip of soup, flicks on his computer, and opens the top folder.

"Female. Human. 26 years old. Employed by the Andorian consulate."

He stops speaking into the recorder and scans the printout inside the folder. The woman had been his first patient this morning, a follow-up appointment after Dr. Puri saw her yesterday and diagnosed a viral infection so rare that only a handful of cases have ever been recorded on Earth. The virus doesn't even have a name yet but is designated TH318 by the Andorian researchers who have been tracking its progress across the quadrant.

"How did a human get an Andorian virus?" McCoy mutters. On his computer he taps into the Starfleet medical database and starts reading. The virus is apparently not very contagious—except through sexual contact. Once exposed, however, the host quickly develops a characteristic purple rash and experiences extreme fatigue and disorientation.

The only known cases of human infection can all be traced to sexual contact with Andorians.

Glancing back through his notes, McCoy says, "Bingo. Well, _working_ wasn't all she was doing at the Andorian consulate."

He bends down to the voice receiver.

"Treated with retinovin; patient shows signs of rapid recovery."

If he'd known that TH318 was a venereal disease, he could have cautioned the patient about re-infection. Frowning, McCoy resolves to check the database more carefully in the future. _Unforgivable oversight. Stupid._

He slides the next folder to the top of the desk and opens it. A third-year cadet with a sprained wrist. Parrises squares, the bane of McCoy's existence.

"How many more people have to fall on their heads playing this crazy game before they get any sense?"

"What?"

McCoy turns suddenly and sees Christine in the doorway.

"Just doing notes," he says. "You need something, or did you give yourself the job of bothering me every few minutes?"

Christine grins. He's losing his touch.

"There's a patient here you might want to see," she says, stepping closer to his desk.

McCoy holds out his empty mug to her and says, "I've seen patients for 13 hours straight. Tell me why I'd like to see another one."

"He's not your usual patient," Christine says, taking the mug. "He's a Vulcan commander."

That _is_ unusual. McCoy pauses and considers.

"Who's on call tonight?"

"Macy's here, and Tsongas. And Nalley came by earlier and said to yell if you need him. He's working the maternity ward tonight and he didn't have anyone there—" Christine looks at her watch,"—as of fifteen minutes ago."

"Macy and Tsongas with patients?"

"Yep."

"Then yell to Nalley to get his butt over here. I want to finish these notes before midnight. I have a date."

Stopping in the doorway, Christine turns and flashes a smile.

"You do? Who is she?"

" _She_ ," McCoy says slowly, "is a bottle of nine year old bourbon waiting for me in my quarters."

For an hour he works undisturbed, transferring his notes into the computer. Something keeps nagging him—some thought just out of range, some idea that flits through his consciousness before he can grasp it.

And then he opens a folder and the pieces fall into place.

A second patient with TH318—a 32-year-old human male employed by the Andorian embassy.

A human male. Not an Andorian. But infected with a virus more common to Andorians.

_Two humans working in the same place, with the same rare Andorian virus._

"Somebody's getting two-timed," he says, realizing with a start that the recorder is still on. "Delete comment," he says.

Something isn't right, he thinks, flipping ahead in the stack of folders. Isn't that the same virus Uhura was diagnosed with?

He tries to remember what her Orion roommate had said—about Uhura working for an Andorian. She's his TA? Was that it? The researchers must have it wrong, then. The virus must be contagious through casual contact.

He tags a query for the database and sends it to the medical library. In a few minutes all of the relevant research should be sorted and marked. He could be on to something worth noting, worth writing up in a medical journal.

For another hour he works his way through the folders, finishing almost at midnight, as he predicted. He looks up at the staccato of heels on the linoleum hallway.

"Don't turn off your computer yet," Christine says, holding out another folder. "Dr. Nalley said he owes you one."

Her ironic grimace is not lost on McCoy.

"Serves him right for being too quick to volunteer," he says. "Let's have it."

Placing the folder in McCoy's hand, Christine says, "Oh, and your pal is here."

"What pal?" McCoy says, distracted by the printout in the folder.

"You know," Christine says, her hand on the door frame, "your drinking buddy. Mr. Blue Eyes."

"Oh, him," McCoy says, snorting. "Tell ole Jimmy I'll be done in a few minutes."

As late as it is, McCoy isn't sleepy—and not really all that tired, despite the long day. When he told Christine he had a date with a bottle of bourbon, he wasn't kidding. Not the ideal date, but the kind he seems to have too often these days, now that Jocelyn and her empty-headed boyfriend are keeping Joanna upset.

"Mama said you don't like Mark," Joanna said the last time they spoke two weeks ago. He doesn't, in fact, like Mark—but Joanna does, and McCoy knows it. Not that he's jealous—not of the time Mark gets to spend with his daughter, or the fact that he's living with his wife—ex-wife, McCoy amends bitterly.

No, he's not jealous of the guy's money or his cushy job or even his good looks, if you can call someone with a low forehead and squinty eyes good looking—

"Male. Vulcan. 28 years old. Instructor at Starfleet Academy."

McCoy scans through Dr. Nalley's scribbled notes. _Patient complaining of lack of focus_ —"Ha! Probably couldn't calculate pi to more than 100 places!" McCoy says. "Dammit, delete comment."

He reads on. _Faint rash appearing on patient's arms and chest. Blood panel strongly suggests TH318, though not conclusive until pathology report is complete. Treatment with retinovin started. Patient resisted scheduling a follow-up appointment._

"I'll be damned," McCoy says, flicking off the voice recorder. What is going on? A virus so rare that it hasn't been properly named—and four people show up within two days to the same clinic with it.

Opening his mailbox, McCoy sees a reply from the medical reference librarian. Not much on TH318—but one thing is clear. It is only contracted through sexual contact.

"Can't be," McCoy says.

"What can't?"

"Come in, Jim," McCoy says, not looking up from the computer. "Sorry, but I got sideswiped by a mystery."

"A mystery?" Jim Kirk says, sidling up to McCoy and peering over his shoulder to the computer monitor. "I thought you were a doctor, not a detective."

"Yeah, well," McCoy says, tapping through the different screens, glancing quickly through the charts. "Remind me to tell you some day about all the different hats doctors have to wear."

"I will," Jim says. "In fact, you can tell me now, over a drink. My treat."

"If I ordered a second blood panel," McCoy says, his eyes still on the monitor, "and tracked the predicted mutation schedule, I could figure out who infected whom—"

"Come on, Sherlock," Jim says, shaking McCoy's shoulder. "You need to get out of this place."

"It'd be a bear getting them all to come back in, though," McCoy says. "What did that report say?"

He flips through the last chart and reads aloud.

" _Patient resisted scheduling a follow up appointment_. Probably start some interstellar incident if I insisted—"

"I'm leaving," Jim announces, walking toward the office door.

"No, wait!" McCoy calls over his shoulder. "If I could just—"

"See ya!" Jim calls, walking on into the hall.

For a moment McCoy dithers frantically. It has to be a fluke. The research has to be flawed, or more likely, incomplete. Or—

He doesn't know Uhura all that well—not really. Oh, she sat in on the xenobiology seminar when he presented, and they've bickered in friendly disagreement over plenty of quick cafeteria meals, and she's fun and smart, and easy on the eyes—

 _The humans who work at the Andorian embassy._ They must have been the first infected. Dr. Puri started treating the woman yesterday.

So the woman infected the man. That makes sense. But then how did Uhura get it?

"I'm out of here!" Jim yells from the end of the hall. "Really!"

What had that roommate said? If it hadn't been six hours and 32 patients ago, he might be able to remember all the details. Uhura works for an Andorian? No, he made that mistake before. For a Vulcan. Wasn't that it? And now a Vulcan is infected? Is Uhura somehow involved with—

Suddenly he is tired, but more than that, he doesn't really want to be alone. Tomorrow is Joanna's birthday—and though he sent her a gift a week ago, he hasn't heard a word. Is Jocelyn telling her not to call?

"I'm coming!" he calls, snapping off the computer and grabbing his overcoat from the hook on the back of the door. "Wait up, Jim! You promised me a drink!"

X X X X X X X X

Spock waits 17 minutes before he spies Nyota's trajectory as she makes her way across the commons toward the cafeteria the next morning. He cannot know with absolute certainty how long he has waited. 17 minutes is an _approximation_ only—his sense of time is still slightly fogged, an artifact of either the virus or the treatment.

Although she is dressed in the same red long-sleeved jumper that most of the cadets wear, she stands out immediately from the crowd, walking with more grace, her demeanor more…illuminated, as if the sunlight is shining directly on her.

_An optical illusion?_

A fanciful notion.

Not like him at all. He hasn't recovered as much as he thought.

The rash along his arms has faded, but his face is sallow—or so it seemed when he glanced at his reflection in his apartment mirror earlier.

And the mental…distraction. Even standing here now is a symptom of illogical thinking. He should have waited to speak to her when she arrives at the office later this morning.

Except…he couldn't. Since he returned home last night from the infirmary with the diagnosis and called up the particulars on his computer, a dark, lowering worry has shimmered around the edges of his thoughts, like a migraine about to erupt.

_No known cases other than through sexual transmission._

The research on TH318 is unambiguous.

Briefly he considers walking away, but before he can, he sees from the expression on Nyota's face that she has spotted him. Her hand flies into the air, that odd human tendency to flag someone's attention with a wave.

Watching her close the distance between them, he tries to project a calm he doesn't feel. A fleeting image—an amalgam of all the different men he has ever seen her speaking to, sitting with, walking beside—sends a spasm of fury through him.

If she notices, she doesn't show it.

"Good morning, Commander," she says, smiling, and he nods. "What are you doing lurking about the cafeteria door?"

"The word you mean," he says, stepping to the door and pulling it open for her, "is _waiting_. I wanted to assure myself that you are fully recovered."

A partial truth. They also have to _talk_.

"Sounds like lurking to me," Nyota says, threading her way through the crowded room toward the serving lines. He follows in her wake.

They both take trays and make their way down the line—Nyota picking up a bowl of fruit and yogurt, Spock taking only tea.

"You came all the way here for tea?" she jokes.

Any other day he would have joked back. _The inexpensive institution tea here has much to commend it_ , for example—that would have elicited a laugh, or at least a smile. Today, however, he struggles to keep his hands from shaking.

As they set down their trays and pull out chairs at the end of a long table, Nyota says, "Thank you for the soup. When did you have time to make it?"

"I did not make it," Spock says, warming his hands on his teacup. "My mother did. She vacuum-packed it and sent it with my father, something she often does when he travels here, though I do not understand why. I have her recipe and can make it for myself whenever I choose. And the credits it costs to transport it make it impractical—"

Nyota looks up from dipping her spoon in her bowl and says, "It was wonderful. I tried to call you last night to thank you…but I couldn't get through. Is everything okay?"

"I was at the infirmary," he says. Nyota sets her spoon down at once and takes in a gasp of air.

"You were sick!"

"With the same virus," Spock says, "that infected you."

"Oh, no!" Her distress is unmistakable. He is instantly ashamed that he takes delight in her misery. Her… _care_ …for him is on display. Somehow that is reassuring.

Two male cadets holding trays wander up scouting out the seats nearby. Spock gives what he hopes is a discouraging look and they move further away before sitting down. Nyota leans over the table and lowers her voice.

"I'm so sorry! I never should have come to your apartment! I used your tea mug. And my germs are all over your bed."

She says this last word so softly that he has to strain in the crowded room to hear her.

"This particular virus," Spock says, slowing his breathing to keep his voice steady, "originated on Andoria and can survive no exposure to Terran air. It cannot be transferred through casual touch, and it does not survive on objects such as a tea mug or the pillows."

"Then how—"

"The indications are that it is transferred through sexual contact, probably because it can be transferred anaerobically that way."

At last he has come to the topic he has ruminated on for _approximately_ the last eight hours. With an effort, he strives to adopt what Nyota calls his _professor's tone_.

"Because exposure to the atmosphere is lethal to the virus, it spreads through secretions only. Even a kiss—"

"I kissed you!"

He watches the wheels of her attention spring into motion. In his consciousness the darkness that he has struggled to beat back looms up, with an almost palpable need to strike out at someone.

"Nyota," he says slowly, quietly, aware that addressing her this intimately in public is dangerous, suggestive to anyone overhearing him, a breach of trust. Before he can ask the question that consumes him, he sees her mind race ahead, comprehension dawning.

"That man! The stranger who kissed me!"

Her eyes are wide, her lips parted in genuine astonishment.

He flushes, both in relief and shame at his own jealousy.

_A stranger? She is not in a relationship with someone else—_

"I thought he must be crazy!" she says, and Spock tilts his head and waits for her to explain. "Monday, at the plenary session. A man jumped out of nowhere and kissed me. I was with K'ev—he's one of the Andorians—getting the agenda folders and this… _guy_ …grabbed me. He said he thought I was someone else."

"He may have been disoriented by the virus," Spock supplies, and Nyota nods.

"That must be it. So, he infected me," she says, "and I infected you."

She pauses for a moment and then says, "And you must have thought I—"

Because he is watching her so intently, he notices something he might ordinarily miss—the slightest narrowing of her brow, an uptick in her respiration, a greater luminescence of her eyes. Tears?

Darting a glance down the table, he says, "Before the legislators leave today, perhaps you will accompany me to the last session and we can look for your assailant. If you point him out to me, I will offer you a demonstration of _tal-shaya_."

His words have the desired effect. If she was close to tears before, now she is curious—and amused. He feels her reeling herself back from the brink.

" _Tal-shaya_? What's that?"

"In ancient times, it was the Vulcan form of execution. Merciful and painless. Unfortunately."

Her expression flickers instantly to alarm.

"You're joking. Right?"

"About demonstrating it for you? Yes," he says, "unfortunately."

For a moment they are both motionless, and then she laughs, her face tilted up, her teeth flashing like small white pebbles.

Remembering the last time she nipped him with them, he almost groans.

This is what happens when he goes a night without meditation.

It is going to be a very long day.

**A/N: The rest of the day—the last day of the quarterly legislative session—is the topic of the next chapter. Stay tuned!**


	6. Dropping Hints

**Disclaimer: I neither own nor profit from these characters.**

"My father has asked to meet you," Spock says.

Nyota almost drops her cafeteria tray. The spoon rattles in her empty bowl as she rights the tray and steadies her hand. Taking a deep breath, she heads across the crowded room and sets her tray on the conveyor belt. Spock sets his tray behind hers, empty except for a half-filled cup of cooling tea.

"Are you sure?"

The look he gives her is a cross between withering and amused. Of course he's sure. He doesn't traffic in speculation.

"I mean," she amends, "why? Why now? Did you…say anything?"

 _Does he know about us?_ Her unspoken question lies in the air between them.

"I believe," Spock says, holding open the outside door as she makes her way past, "he wants to see for himself the effects of my mother's soup."

"I'm being serious," she says, heading down the steps.

"As am I," Spock replies. "Since you were too ill to see him when he came to your dorm yesterday—"

"Your father brought the soup? Then Gaila was right! But, why didn't you—"

Nyota starts to head left to the language building but Spock motions her toward the hover bus shelter instead.

"If we catch the next bus, we can get to the session before it convenes."

"Now? I'm going to meet your father now?"

"The Vulcan delegation is leaving after the morning session. The only groups meeting after lunch are the planning committees," Spock says.

"But—"

She can think of no rational objection to meeting Sarek now—except, of course, that her stomach is in rebellion and her breakfast may make an unscheduled reappearance.

The bus heaves into view around the curve and they step up to the curb, waiting behind several other people, professors in gray and one woman in civilian clothing— an observer, or a legislator staying on campus, Nyota thinks. She distracts herself by watching them mount the bus steps ahead of her.

The ride is far too short. As soon as she and Spock enter the front door of the legislative building, she excuses herself, promising to join him shortly.

"I just need…a moment," she says when he looks at her closely. He doesn't move and she tips her chin up, aiming at the door to the main meeting room.

"Go on in. I'll be right there."

Still he doesn't move, and she forces herself to smile. His face is backlit from the sunlight coming in from the floor to ceiling windows, his expression hidden in shadow. Only later, when he finally walks away and she is free to move toward the water fountain mounted on the opposite wall does she consider that he may be as nervous as she is.

The water from the fountain has an unpleasant metallic tang, but she gulps it down. Swiveling suddenly upright, she feels her elbow collide with a woman standing behind her and hears a clatter as several large boxes tumble to the floor.

"I'm so sorry!" Nyota says, leaning down quickly and reaching for the scattered contents of the boxes. Folders, old-fashioned papers, PADDs, flimplasts—she kneels on the floor and rakes them toward her.

The woman trails after a piece of paper that is liberated from the stack by a gust of wind as several delegates hurry past. Her long black coat drags the ground, further disrupting the impromptu pile Nyota gathers up. For another minute they are busy grabbing the contents of the boxes and rearranging them. Finally the woman stands and Nyota gets a better view of her.

 _Doppelganger_. The word comes instantly to mind. This woman is my _doppelganger,_ she thinks. Except for her clothes, the woman is the same height and coloring as Nyota. Even her hair is similar, pulled back in a hairband and falling past her shoulders.

At that moment her annoyance is unmistakable.

"Let me help you," Nyota says, handing the first of the three boxes to the woman. The boxes are like the ones with the agenda folders—cumbersome and too lightweight to stack easily. While the woman holds the first box, Nyota sets the second one on top and sees it start to slip.

"Careful!" she warns. She picks up the third box and says, "I'll get this one."

The woman doesn't argue but leads the way through the side door into the meeting room, the same door where the man had grabbed her on Monday, and Nyota looks around cautiously.

Because it is the last of the formal sessions of the quarterly meeting, most of the Federation delegates are there, many of them apparently milling about in the aisle visiting, reluctant to take their seats. Fortunately the woman's long dark coat makes her easy to spot and Nyota stays within a few paces of her as they thread their way toward the Andorian ambassador and his party.

"Cadet Uhura!"

Professor Artura greets her with unusual enthusiasm. K'ev, the pale Aenar, stands up from his seat and extends his hand.

"I can take that," he says, slipping his fingers around the box. He faces the woman in the long black coat as she puts the other boxes beside him on the floor. "Cadet, have you met my assistant? Karen, this is the cadet I told you about, the one who filled in for you when you were sick."

Karen gives a cursory nod—she is clearly still upset about the bump up. _Or maybe not._ Nyota looks at her again. Her eyes are puffy and her nose red. Surely Nyota didn't hit her that hard.

Yet her face is streaked as if she has been crying. Neither Professor Artura nor K'ev appears to notice.

"We are short-handed again today," Professor Artura says, leaning toward Nyota and speaking so softly that his characteristic lisp is more pronounced. "One of our other assistants quit suddenly. Didn't come to work yesterday, and then sent a message today that he won't be returning to the consulate with the Ambassador. Very strange. If you are free—"

"Thank you, Professor," Nyota says, grateful that she has a reason to turn him down, "but I'm here for only a few minutes. I'm opening the lab this morning."

"I see," Professor Artura says, cutting his eyes to K'ev. Some message flickers between them—Nyota is certain of it—though she can't figure out what it might be or how it could concern her. No matter. She looks around for the Vulcan delegation and sees Spock, head and shoulders above most of the crowd, off to her right.

"Please excuse me," she says to the professor.

Spock is facing in the opposite direction but he turns when she is still fifty meters away in the crowd. His hearing is so acute that he may have picked out her singular footfalls. Or some trace of her presence may still be in his mind, some lingering essence, like the scent after a bouquet of flowers has been removed from a room.

In the corner of her eye she sees Sarek in the background, watching her. Her heartbeat drowns out the ambient noise as she makes her way closer.

"Commander," she says, sneaking a glance at Spock. In this light his eyes are warm and brown and she feels her heart slowing, calming its hammering, as he looks at her.

"Cadet Uhura. I would like to introduce you to my father."

If Spock is sometimes hard to read, Sarek is a total mystery. He stands with his arms loosely at his side, his hands hidden in the folds of his richly embroidered robe. Where Spock's face is a series of curved planes and angles, Sarek's is severe, flat, his eyes so black that Nyota is uneasy looking at him directly.

But she forces herself to.

"Father, this is my teaching assistant, Cadet Uhura."

"Cadet," Sarek says, inclining his head. His voice catches her off guard. Warmer than his eyes and close enough in timbre to his son's to make her do a double take. "You are fully recovered, I see."

"Yes," she says, glad to be able to speak without stumbling over her words. "Thank you so much for bringing the soup."

"Spock was called away," Sarek says, his eyes not leaving her own, "for a briefing. As the hour was late and I was available, bringing the soup was…logical."

 _Is he joking with her?_ Nyota doesn't think it is possible. His expression, his tone—both serious, formal. But his pause and his choice of words—playful. Yes. He might be joking.

"Of course," she says, smiling, "Spock probably wished he hadn't given away the soup when he got sick later."

Sarek's eyebrow shoots up.

"You were ill?"

This said to Spock, who looks as discomfited as Nyota has ever seen him. His father didn't know? Does it matter?

_She was sick. Then Spock fell ill. Cause and effect._

_I'm sorry!_ she says with her eyes when she catches Spock's glance.

"I realized I was…ill," Spock says, looking past Sarek's shoulder, "during the briefing. That is why I canceled our meal and went to the infirmary."

"We have two healers traveling with us," Sarek says. "You could have seen one of them."

"The briefing was on the side of the campus near the infirmary," Spock says, "so it was easier to go there. As you can see, I am fine now."

Something about the exchange doesn't ring true, but Nyota is determined not to give anything else away. She's abashed to have said as much as she has.

"Ambassador," she says, taking a step closer, hoping to draw his attention away from Spock, "I hope you have a safe journey home. Please send my compliments for the soup to your wife. And thank you both."

"Certainly," Sarek says, his slow nod a benediction, or a dismissal, she isn't sure which. She accepts it as both and nods back.

"Commander," she says to Spock, "I'm going to open the lab."

"I'll join you soon," he says, and though she searches for some hint to his mood, he is carefully closed, his posture angled away from her, his tone of voice matter-of-fact.

A message to her to do likewise. She is careful not to look back as she walks away.

"Leaving already?"

K'ev's voice—she looks around and sees him sitting alone on the aisle.

"I have to get to work," she says, leaning down to speak over the crowd. The lights dim once, twice, a signal to the delegates to find their places.

"Have a safe trip home," she says, and K'ev says something that is lost in a sudden upswirl of noise.

All of the way to the hover bus stop, and then on the bus and the walk to the language building, she tries to decipher his last words. For some reason that she can't name, she knows that the words are important, that K'ev would have weighed them carefully, thoughtfully. She _feels_ this but doesn't know how.

Perhaps it was just a farewell— _take care_ , he might have said. But no. More than two words, more than that.

She tries to remember. The crowd, the laughter of a delegate behind her, the rustle of clothes. And K'ev's words, his eyes blank and unseeing and trying to communicate something to her. Some concern. Some warning.

 _Take care._ No. _Be very careful._

There. She hears the words at last as he had said them.

_Be very careful._

She shivers in the chilly morning air.

X X X X X X

As he does every morning at daybreak, Professor Artura unfurls one antenna, then the other, like thick, rubbery fronds of a Terran fern. Pulled awake by the sunlight slipping through his bedroom window, he stretches out flat on his back, his arms crossed over his chest, and practices the calming techniques he learned on Vulcan years ago.

Even after all this time he needs them. His dreams are still populated by his dead wife, his daughter. When he wakes, the first thing in his awareness—always—is the urge for retribution. The need to avenge their death never goes away.

But he can mute it, and even sublimate it for hours at a time-if he meditates and employs the breathing exercises T'Van taught him. And, of course, if he settles himself, quiets himself, enough to feel T'Van's presence in the corner of his mind, like the steady hum of distant machinery, unnoticed until all other sounds cease.

This morning he needs more time than usual to slow his heartbeat, to consign the ghosts of Taria and Lulli back into memory. The stress of the legislative meeting, certainly, and all it entails—such as rescheduling his language classes so he can attend to the delegation's needs—but more than that, his dreams are troubled because of Cadet Uhura's sudden illness.

_If Lulli were alive—_

If Lulli were alive, Cadet Uhura would be a pleasant acquaintance, an eager, bright young woman whose interactions with him were short and friendly but nothing more. A colleague's TA. A budding young officer who will leave the Academy soon enough, like dozens of other humans Professor Artura has come to know and respect in the five years since he began teaching on Earth.

If Lulli were alive, this is all Cadet Uhura would be to him.

But when she tips her head a certain way, or descends the stairs ahead of him with a dancer's grace, or in the motion of her fingers when she hands him a cup of tea, Cadet Uhura brings his daughter back to life.

If he looks at her from the corner of his eye or sits so that her movements are hidden from view, he can pretend that it is Lulli in the break room pulling out a chair, turning on the kettle, chatting with Commander Spock.

"Is Cadet Uhura working with the Andorian ambassador again today?" This from Commander Spock yesterday morning, his voice betraying concern—or something closer to disapproval.

A shame, really, that their relationship has become strained recently, the Commander taking visible umbrage when he's tried to give subtle warnings.

If Lulli were alive, he wouldn't bother with the hints and cautions, the puns said only half in jest, alerting the Commander that his affection for his teaching assistant is obvious, and not because it is affection he shows. Professor Artura admits freely to his own affection for her, and to the protective longing she calls up in him.

Commander Spock's affection is different, dangerous, laced with such sexual possession that only a fool could miss it.

Or perhaps a race less attentive to emotion, less passionate than Andorians, might overlook the way the Commander caresses the Cadet with his gaze, the way she draws him close with the angle of her shoulder when they walk side-by-side.

But because Lulli is long dead, he spreads his attention to the young woman who embodies her now and worries that she is hurtling headlong into destruction—that they both are, these beautiful lovers whose vision is so clouded that they mistakenly think everyone else is also blind.

"I have not heard from Cadet Uhura this morning," Professor Artura had said, and at once Spock's mood shifted to outright worry. "I told her I would contact her if we needed her services, but K'ev's aide is well enough to rejoin us today. Is something amiss?"

"Possibly," Spock said, taking a step away. "She was scheduled to open the lab this morning but did not arrive."

"I can contact her if you wish," Professor Artura said, beginning to share Spock's worry, reaching into his pocket for his comm.

"I have already tried," Spock said, but Professor Artura called her anyway, twice.

He isn't sure how Spock finally got in touch with her roommate—and more, how he convinced her to take her to the infirmary. All afternoon Professor Artura watched Spock attend the Vulcan delegation during the interminable formal debates, outwardly sanguine and calm and efficient, but to the Andorian's eyes, as tightly wound as a spring.

By late afternoon the legislators dispersed into committees. Gathering his equipment, Professor Artura overheard Spock speaking to his father—the older man standing almost stiffly, his head tilted forward in attention.

"When I return from the security briefing I will take it to her," he said, and Professor Artura noticed a silver thermos in his hand. "Afterward I can meet you for an evening meal, if you like."

In his time on Vulcan, Professor Artura had often heard the interactions of parents and children. The respectful, almost obsequious tone was not unfamiliar, Vulcan children showing the same care for their elders as Andorians. _Lulli, for instance_ —but those memories served only to remind him of Cadet Uhura—and it was Spock he wanted to focus on. Surely the _her_ was Cadet Uhura. And the thermos? Medicine? Food stuffs? He stepped forward to offer to take it to her.

Before he could, Sarek said, "Starn is taking my place in the economic development committee this afternoon, so I am free. I can deliver this now."

For a moment Spock continued to hold the thermos, but with a quick nod he held it out to his father.

"I pass the cadet's dorm on the way to my apartment," Professor Artura said, and both Spock and Sarek looked up. "I would be happy to accompany you there."

So it was decided. Spock went one way to a Starfleet briefing, and Professor Artura waited as Sarek packed up his supplies and handed them to his intern, a tall boy whose thin features and unshadowed face broadcast his youth.

"You must be proud of your son," Professor Artura said as he led Sarek out the side door of the legislative building into the late afternoon sun. For once the air was warm and dry—so different from the frozen expanse of his homeworld.

Sarek did not reply, though Professor Artura was not surprised. Admitting to being proud would be bad manners, or worse, a crack in the armor. Forget the lie that Vulcans were emotionless people, that their feelings were layered so deeply beneath the surface they they themselves could not mine them out. Forget that. Professor Artura knew better.

Still, he had hoped for a chance to speak alone to the Ambassador. He decided to try again.

"Did I hear correctly, that Commander Spock's aide is ill?"

"You did. Spock thought this _plomeek_ soup might speed her recovery."

Sarek's words were so straightforward, so guileless, that Professor Artura glanced at him as they made their way along the paved walkway. _Speed her recovery?_ Surely his father recognized the transparency of that rationale. _Speed her recovery?_

If he still believed in the gods of Sha Ka Ree he would have said a prayer to them: Open this man's eyes. Help him see the danger his son is in.

But he lost his faith long ago, when he lost his family. If there were gods—if they waited for him somewhere beyond this world—then they were surely blind and deaf and impotent. Or cruel. Or worse, indifferent.

" _Plomeek_ soup?" Professor Artura said. "I haven't had that in quite some time."

"You are familiar with it?"

Now it was Professor Artura's turn to hesitate before giving an answer.

"I ate it often," he said, "when I was on Vulcan. I…worked with…a healer named T'Van. At the medical center in Kir."

"I was unaware that the researchers in Kir did collaborative work with off-worlders."

"I was not a collaborator," Professor Artura said, "but a patient."

"Indeed."

No inflection, as if Sarek was completely unfazed by walking beside someone who admitted to spending time in a mental hospital.

When Taria and Lulli were killed, when the blood feud against Taria's family caught up to them—and not just to them, but to her younger sister and her two small sons—he had been wild with grief for so long that his uncle had sent him to distant relatives to recover. K'ev's family had welcomed him at first, respectful of his loss, careful not to criticize the culture of revenge that had swept Artura's family away.

For a time he had been mute and unresponsive, aware that his Aenar hosts found his suffering hard to bear, their strong telepathic sensibilities vibrating in sympathy to his loss. When they suggested—at last, and with great kindness—that he seek help elsewhere, he had gone to the only other place he knew for people like him, people haunted by the twin desires to cause great harm and to never raise a hand again in violence.

Vulcan.

Without T'Van, he would have died. In all the languages that he knew, the Terrans said it best: broken-hearted. He was dying from grief, broken-hearted, when T'Van agreed to work with him.

She dismantled what he thought he knew about Vulcans almost at once.

"I grieve with thee."

Before she said her name, before she asked him for his own, she offered him the balm of words. He met her eyes and saw genuine empathy there.

Where was the famed Vulcan distance? The chilly demeanor?

"My grief is killing me," he said, and she nodded, as if she had already discovered this and was waiting for him to agree.

"Do you want to die?" she asked.

 _Yes! A thousand times yes!_ And yet, he had not died, not in the many months since the killers broke into his house and pinned him to the floor, helpless, while they carried Taria and Lulli off.

He had not died when their bodies were recovered, nor when he consigned them to ashes and attended to the funerary rites, nor when the hard work of grief began in earnest when the shock wore off at last, weeks later, and he woke up in an empty house and knew before he opened his eyes that every day from then on would be a burden to get through, a desert to stumble across.

Did he want to die?

Like most Andorians, he was skilled in all the traditional martial arts, in weapons both new and ancient. If he had wanted to die he would have died by now.

"I don't want to live."

The difference wasn't just semantic. T'Van nodded again.

"Because all you can imagine is this life," she said, and it was true. His imagination faltered.

They said little else that first day, but from then on T'Van spent part of each morning with him, sometimes sitting quietly, sometimes asking him to speak about his family.

Gradually he told her a few details—his wife's hesitation about marrying him and the many jokes they had shared since then about it. Her inability to cook a meal without burning part of it. The way she became so excited about her linguistics research that her words tumbled out in a rush when she returned home at night from her workplace—how he teased her for being an inarticulate linguist, and how she pretended to be offended but was not.

About Lulli he said nothing. It hurt too much.

One day when he had been in the hospital for several weeks, he noticed T'Van's attention wandering slightly, and he said, "This must be tedious for you," and she turned and looked at him directly and sighed, such an uncharacteristic thing for a Vulcan to do that Artura was startled.

"Please forgive me," T'Van said at once, "but today my mind is elsewhere. My…son died on this day three years ago and I—"

She paused, her mouth open, her gaze unfocused, and for the first time since Taria's and Lulli's deaths, he felt something other than overwhelming anger and pain for his own loss.

"You had a son?"

"Sorval," she said, her eyes seeking out his own. "A shuttle accident. An ion storm. Everyone onboard lost. He and his wife had been home with their new baby for a visit and were heading back to Earth where he was working at the time."

"I'm sorry," he said, and even as he said the words, he felt an odd sensation, like regaining the use of a limb after it had fallen asleep in the cold. _To care about someone other than himself_. The relief was palpable.

Her son, she told him over the next few days, was an engineer for a power company that built solar collectors all over the quadrant. Gifted in math, he had also been an accomplished musician and poet.

"Though his father did not approve," T'Van said, "I was pleased that he chose to expand his interests. And his bondmate shared those interests as well. They were well-matched."

"How do you live," Artura said, "after losing him?"

"Some days I do not live," she said, and Artura felt such a rush of gratitude for her honesty that he reached out without thinking and took her fingers in his own. She did not pull away.

He stayed on Vulcan at the hospital for four more months, and though T'Van said nothing directly about her bondmate, Artura realized through what she didn't say that they no longer lived together, that since their son's death they were as estranged as any two people sharing a mental bond could be.

From comments she made about other things, he came to realize that her husband blamed her for their son's death, for her encouraging his quixotic attitude that made traveling and working on another world an adventure rather than an inconvenience.

And more. That she blamed herself.

"Letting go of guilt is harder than letting go of sorrow," she said one day, and this time she reached for his hand first, her mind brushing his own.

 _Do you want to show me?_ He felt her question and considered. To relive the helplessness when his attackers held him down—

He felt the familiar fury, the black need to strike back in time-honored retribution. Dimly he was aware that T'Van was shocked by the depth of his rage—repulsed by it—but he showed her the other thing, too, his fear that if he returned to Andoria he would seek out the killers and strike back.

"And start a whole new chain of hate," T'Van said aloud, and he nodded, thinking of his three brothers and a sister and his seven nieces and nephews, all who would be in danger from retribution if he killed the killers, enlarging the feud to another clan.

"But I want to kill them," he admitted. "It is what I think of when I wake in the morning, and I go to sleep thinking of my hands around their necks."

"Why didn't the killers attack you?" T'Van asked, and he explained how blood feuds worked, how Taria's family was a target because her uncle had murdered a member of a rival clan.

"Everyone with the blood of her clan was a target," he said. "That's why…Lulli was killed…and I wasn't."

"And if you kill the killer, then your blood family is at risk?"

He said nothing, and T'Van sighed.

"The needs of the many," she said, "outweigh the needs of the few, or the one. Not what you want, or maybe not what you believe, but in this case, I think Surak's words may help you find a way to live."

It was T'Van's suggestion that he not return to Andoria, that he consider a place as different from his homeworld as his reawakening imagination could ponder.

"Earth, for instance," she said the day before he was released from the hospital. "Surely some of the universities there need a good language professor."

He had been noncommittal. At first he didn't want to wander too far from home, preferring instead to take a two-year research position on one of the rim worlds. In their last conversation, T'Van had slipped her hand into his again, and her mind into his, too—so that even when she pulled her hand away, he could still sense her with him, in a recessed corner of his awareness, like the buzz or a whirr or a steady hum, or a heartbeat. His imagination? He wasn't sure.

But every morning when he woke up, he listened first for the heartbeat that was hers, and hearing it, remembered to live.

"The six months that I was on Vulcan were some of the best of my life," Professor Artura tells Sarek. He knows how incongruous that sounds, saying that his stay in a mental hospital has been a highlight, measured against the rest of his life and found worthy.

Or perhaps because he is a Vulcan and prideful despite his attempts to hide it, Sarek doesn't find that admission surprising at all.

"I imagine that your _plomeek_ soup is superior to what the hospital served," Professor Artura says.

Sarek does not turn his head but Professor Artura senses some shift in his posture that denotes…what? Affection?

"My wife's recipe is quite good. She likes to send some to Spock whenever I have occasion to travel to Earth. An expensive indulgence, actually. Though Spock is usually eager to eat it."

"He must be very fond of his assistant," Professor Artura says, "if he is willing to part with such good soup."

He darts a glance at Sarek as they approach Cadet Uhura's dorm. A squat building only four stories high, it is an aesthetically unappealing mess of brick and glass. The front door opens into a small lobby manned by cadets who sit behind a desk and answer calls and deliver messages.

As they get close to the door, Professor Artura slows and says, "Have you met Cadet Uhura? A pity. I do so enjoy watching her interactions with Commander Spock. Quite playful. And witty. She keeps him on his toes."

How much is saying too much? He only wants to plant a seed of doubt.

Sarek is an unreadable cipher, matching his steps to Professor Artura's, holding the thermos before him like a saber.

"Of course," the Andorian says, "Vulcans are wise to arrange their children's futures. Prevents all sorts of missteps, particularly in an organization like Starfleet with strict prohibitions about relationships. Someone might get the wrong idea, watching your son and his aide. Ah, looks like you can leave the soup at the front desk. The residence manager will deliver it to her. I'll head on home now, if you don't mind. I'll probably see you tomorrow at the closing session."

_Guilt is harder to live with than sorrow._

Has he done the right thing? Or has Sarek heard him at all, understood at all what he is trying to warn him about?

If Cadet Uhura knew what he was up to, she would never forgive him.

The next day when he sees her, hale and hearty, carrying a box and following K'ev's aide down the aisle before the legislative session begins, he is both surprised and delighted.

"Cadet Uhura!"

"I can take that," K'ev says, standing and taking the box from her. Professor Artura hears K'ev introduce Karen and Cadet Uhura—and for a moment he is startled by the similarities in the young women.

But the similarities are fleeting. As soon as she moves, he sees again why Cadet Uhura reminds him of Lulli. Her graciousness when she greets K'ev again, her kindness in carrying the box for Karen.

And Karen! She has weathered her illness poorly, her face mottled and her disposition foul. There's a story there.

"We are short-handed again today," Professor Artura says, leaning toward Nyota. "One of our other assistants quit suddenly. Didn't come to work yesterday, and then sent a message today that he won't be returning to the consulate with the Ambassador. Very strange. If you are free—"

"Thank you, Professor," Nyota says, and he can tell from the pinched expression in her face that she will tell him no, "but I'm only here for a few minutes. I'm opening the lab this morning."

"I see," Professor Artura says, cutting his eyes to K'ev. Their conversation this morning, the admission K'ev made that such close proximity to so many humans has been exhausting. And his second admission that against his will he has seen the thoughts of those around him—the humans with their barely disguised emotions, and the off-worlders, people you would expect to be more decorous. Even the Vulcans. Broadcasting their emotions so that the highly telepathic Aenar are forced to participate.

The Ambassador's son, for instance—and the young woman who works for him, who worked with K'ev most of Monday. Their surreptitious glances, the way they seek each other out across a crowded room, the undercurrent of their attraction…their secrecy announcing, as badly-held secrets always do, the seriousness of their transgression.

"What will people say?" K'ev asked, and Professor Artura shrugged.

"Please excuse me," Nyota says to the professor, and he watches her hone in on the Vulcan delegation sitting near the front of the room, Commander Spock as tall and demanding as a beacon.

From here Professor Artura watches them, like watching a Terran play, the Commander ignoring everyone else around him as Cadet Uhura comes close. And the Ambassador, nodding and speaking, and at one point looking mildly surprised.

If she finds out what he has told the Ambassador—if her heart is broken—she may not forgive him. _Will_ not, he is certain.

But he has to help them end this. He has to warn them, has to tell them somehow that already he has overheard random snippets in meetings, hushed references to the fraternization rules in the same sentence with her name, with Spock's name, nothing definite, nothing said very loud, but an undertow, an unseen rip tide waiting to carry them off.

If he doesn't do something—well, guilt is harder to live with than sorrow.

He wishes, as he always does, that he could sit with T'Van and ask her what to do. That he could do more than lie awake at night, sending her his thoughts through the tenuous connection he feels, listening for her words and sometimes, sometimes, hearing her, faintly, reassuring him that he is not alone.

As terrible as his past has been, on the last day of the quarterly legislative session he does not know that his future holds another moment of loss so overwhelming that it will fling him to his knees. It will be a Thursday evening, a week after the annual remembrance day for Taria and Lulli—a day that falls this year on the Terran calendar of February. Whoever assigned the months must have known how bleak most Februaries would be, how wracked with cold and wet, how gray and low the clouds, and decreed that it would also be the shortest month.

In the next February in his future he will be in a crowded room of faculty and staff watching the newsfeeds, worrying about the cadets who have hurriedly shipped out, leaving the campus dark and quiet.

And then he will feel it—a startled cry followed by silence—a numbness in his mind as he confirms what he always believed, always hoped, that T'Van was part of him, with him, in him.

Her sudden absence will send him to his feet, upsetting the people sitting nearby who are trying to watch the newsfeeds.

He will crumple then, in a heap, the first person on Earth to know that Vulcan is gone.

His imagination cannot conceive such a future. No one can. Right now the biggest danger he can imagine is Lulli—no, _Uhura_ —losing her way so far that she can't get back.

X X X X X X X X

Spock stands for three minutes and 27 seconds in the doorway of the lab before she notices him. Those unobserved moments are always surprisingly pleasing, though he cannot for certain say why. The relief of being the observer instead of the observed, perhaps, is part of it. The ability to recede into the background and indulge in aesthetic appreciation without needing to justify it—that matters, too.

But it is more than that, and he knows it. The words, however, stay out of his reach.

Catching a glimpse of him at last, she straightens up from where she is leaning over the shoulder of a student, directing her through a software loop. Nyota's hand motions upward briefly, a compromise of a wave, and he steps back and goes to his office.

Now that he knows she is here, that she knows he knows, he can work.

For an hour he plans a project for his computer class, arranging time for his students to meet in groups and scheduling his own consultation visits. At 1123 he hears Professor Artura shuffle down the hall—the legislative session must have adjourned. He pauses and reaches out through the bond he has with his father and senses industry and energy. His father and the other delegates are busy getting ready to board the shuttle for home.

The lab is scheduled to stay open until 1145 and at 1146 Nyota comes into his office, closing the door behind her.

That isn't typical and he looks up in surprise.

"Quite a day," she says, and he knows that she wants to talk about Sarek. He decides, however, to play obtuse.

"Explain," he says, carefully looking at his PADD instead of giving her his full attention. As he expects, she shifts her position until she is standing immediately in front of him. At some level she must know that she is a magnet for his eyes. He makes a mental note to ask her, later.

"Your father," she says, pulling the chair out and turning it around before straddling it.

He raises an eyebrow. He's never seen her sitting this way before. It is oddly…erotic.

"I'm sorry about letting the cat out of the bag," she says, "and don't pretend you don't know what I mean."

"I presume," he says, finally looking her in the eye, "that you are referring to the fact that my father did not know that I had been ill."

"Exactly so. What did he say about it, after I left?"

Spock considers. Sarek had said surprisingly little after Nyota had left, but what he had said felt oddly freighted with symbolism.

"He said he was gratified that Mother's soup was so well-received."

"That's it?"

"We did not have much time before the session began."

"But," Nyota says, her brow wrinkled, her mouth pursed, "he didn't put anything…together? About our being sick? At…the same time?"

Spock switches off his PADD and watches it power down before answering.

"If he was concerned, he did not say anything. A coincidence, Nyota, is just that. Nothing more."

He stands up from his desk as she does, too.

"Come here," she says, reaching up and tugging on his ear. Her touch shorts out some connection in his brain and he closes his eyes, unable to bear any other sensory input.

He feels her breath on his cheek before he feels her lips brush over his.

"Nyota," he says, willing himself to tell her to wait, to stop, that what they are doing is inviting discovery.

But any other words die in his throat.

Leaning into her, he slides his hands over her hips and feels her pressing back, arching up as his arms fold them together. She steps back, pulling him along, until she is stopped by the wall, and he rests his weight on her, slipping his knee between hers, hearing her gasp such a guttural moan that he almost loses himself then and there.

"Commander!"

Professor Artura's voice on the other side of the door, three meters away. Instantly they are frozen, barely able to breathe.

A knock, then two, and the Andorian professor calls out again.

Nyota's eyes are wide and luminous and so close that he has to lean away to look at her directly. He gives the tiniest shake of his head: _Don't move_.

The door isn't locked. If Professor Artura turns the knob he will be able to come right in.

Spock feels Nyota's heart beating against his chest.

For what Nyota will later call _forever_ they wait, their breath bated, listening as Professor Artura paces near the door. At last he shuffles off and Spock leans his forehead on Nyota's, his relief washing through them both.

Without a word they part, smoothing their clothes.

"I'm…sorry," Nyota says. "I just wanted—"

"Dinner?"

A close call, and he isn't blameless. He offers a meal as an apology and an absolution.

They wait until they hear Professor Artura close his office and walk to the lift an hour later before they open Spock's door and head to the market deli near his apartment. Neither is hungry enough to eat a meal, though they buy frozen fruit on a stick, something Vijay promises them they will like—and take hesitant nibbles as they walk the distance to the faculty apartment building.

When they are inside his apartment, the door locked securely behind them, Nyota moves into his arms at once. Like the pleasure of watching her unobserved, her initiating their intimacy is an unlooked for gift, a liberation of sorts. It never fails to delight him, her fearlessness most of all.

"Now," she asks breathily, "where were we," and she kisses him before bending his forehead into hers. The ache he has felt since she pulled him to her in his office has never lessened. The worry over her illness, the close calls with both his father and now Professor Artura—the weight of worry and relief and his urgency and desire roll over them so swiftly that he feels her lifting up and falling, shuddering, in his arms, and he lets himself follow.

They stand beside the door for another minute, and then two, and finally she leans back and says, "That must be some sort of record."

He raises one brow and teases.

"A paradox."

"What are you talking about?" she says, searching his face. "I just meant that was…fast."

"And slow," Spock adds, "if you consider that we began this 87 minutes 42 seconds ago."

She laughs then, as he hoped she would.

"Perhaps we should practice our timing," he says, and she takes his hand and leads him down the hall to the bedroom.

"I may be a slow learner," she grins up at him. "We may have to practice a lot."


	7. Talisman

**Disclaimer: I neither own these characters nor profit from writing about them.**

"You're going out now?"

Gaila sounds more annoyed than surprised. Sprawled on her bed on her stomach, her chin propped on the heel of one hand, she flicks idly through the screens of her newspadd.

"It's not that late," Nyota says, trying not to sound defensive. "Besides, you aren't one to talk. I didn't even hear you come in last night."

"That's different," Gaila says, setting her newspadd aside and sitting up in the bed. "I was out having fun. Having to go back to work after you've already manned the lab all day—well, it's wrong, Ny. You ought to report Commander Spock to the TA union."

Pausing in the act of slipping her comm into her pocket, Nyota gives her roommate a hard glare. Surely Gaila is joking.

"If it wasn't important, he wouldn't have asked," Nyota says, "and I'm not doing anything right now anyway. If I were busy, I'd have told him no."

She reaches to the bedside table and picks up her key card, putting it in her pocket with her comm.

"Sure you would," Gaila says, smirking.

Leaving her dorm and heading across the campus, Nyota resists the temptation to pull her comm from her pocket. She's read the message on the screen three times already, a rare text from Spock.

_Please come by. I need you._

"Your comm chimed," Gaila had told her as she came of the shower a few minutes ago, unpinning her hair. "Sounds like a text came for you." Something in Gaila's announcement sounded odd, and for a moment Nyota was certain her roommate knew more than she was saying. Had she read the message?

But the comm was where she had left it, on the table with her key card and a half-eaten granola bar.

Spock almost never contacts her this way. He's much more likely to flag a note to her computer mail. Those messages are usually direct and specific: changes in the next day's schedule, for instance, or questions forwarded from students being tutored in the lab.

_Please come by. I need you._

Direct but not specific. Not like him at all.

_Needs her how? For what?_

And suddenly she gets it. This isn't about work. He isn't waiting for her at the lab. He's at home.

Grinning to herself, she veers off the path to the language building and heads straight across the campus to the faculty housing. What had she told Gaila? That she would have told him no if she had been busy?

What a lie.

At the apartment building, Nyota sees two people standing in a pool of light at the outside entrance key reader. Both are people she has seen before though she's never spoken to them. The more striking is a young blonde woman who obviously lives here. The other is an older man in some sort of work overalls who is fidgeting with a small box mounted beside the door. The building supervisor, then. Nyota steps up beside them and watches for a moment before either looks her way.

"Just a sec," the supervisor says. "Power surge blanked the reader. I've almost finished resetting it."

The blonde woman turns toward her and frowns slightly. Nyota gives a hesitant smile back but the woman looks away.

"There," the supervisor says, pressing several buttons in succession. "It ought to work now. Try it."

In the few seconds that it takes the blonde woman to flick her key card under the reader, Nyota notes her carefully manicured hand—the short, stylish, buffed nails, a thin gold bangle around her wrist. With a self-conscious glance at her own right hand, she sees where she has nibbled away the dark polish from the nail on her thumb.

A loud _snick_ and the lock on the outside door opens. The blonde woman pushes the door and the building supervisor reaches up and catches it before it closes, nodding for Nyota to go on through.

"Thank you," she says as the door swings shut behind him. He opens the utility room just inside the hall across from Spock's apartment and goes inside. The blonde woman's footsteps echo loudly in the hall and Nyota cranes her neck to see where she is going. The lift, probably, or the steps further on. But the woman stops abruptly at the apartment before the lift and swipes her card, disappearing inside and leaving the hall suddenly silent.

Only then does Nyota notice a small slip of paper stuck with some sort of adhesive to the door of Spock's apartment. She recognizes his small, careful script, his letters with odd flourishes and arabesques in unexpected places still managing to look neat and lean.

_Apartment 12B._

Her confusion is matched by her disappointment. They aren't going to…be together…alone?

Apartment 12B is almost directly overhead on the second floor. Taking two steps at a time, Nyota hurries up the stairwell and backtracks to the right apartment.

Like Spock's door, this one has a narrow rectangular frosted glass inset along one side. For a moment she lets her hand hover over the door chime as she bobs her head, trying to see something through the glass. Nothing. She mashes her finger on the chime and waits.

Footfalls and a shadow passing before the glass—and suddenly the door opens and Nyota is facing another student, a second year cadet she has seen in the computer science department. Anna? No, Janna. Janna Lin. Professor Carter's aide. They've spoken before, briefly, when Spock introduced her to his colleagues in that department. The social gathering at mid-term? And once in Spock's office when he and Professor Carter were working out the logistics of his schedule when he was tapped as an adjunct to the language department.

"Hi," Nyota says, and Janna opens the door wider and waves her in. "I got a message—"

"They're in here," Janna says, and Nyota walks down a short hall to a room on the right. Inside are Spock and Professor Carter sitting side-by-side in front of three large computer monitors on a long table. Both look up as she and Janna come in.

"Thank you so much for coming," Professor Carter says. Almost as tall as Spock and as thin, she wears her straight sandy-colored hair in a short bob tucked behind her ears. Judging her age is difficult, though Nyota suspects she isn't much older than 30. From time to time she and Spock have collaborated on projects for their computer science students and Nyota has helped with scheduling lab time. Other than that, her contact with Professor Carter has been limited to the same social gatherings and random meetings in the hall that characterize her interactions with her aide.

Before she can protest that she doesn't know why she is here, she sees Spock shift in his chair and raise his brows—an apology, of sorts, for catching her off guard.

"Professor Carter needs someone to set up a language subroutine to test her scanning program," he says.

"Oh!"

No asking if she is interested, nor offering any praise for her proficiency in Federation xenolanguages—not to mention her ability to problem solve software glitches in the lab on the fly. For a moment she is annoyed.

Professor Carter seems to sense her hesitation.

"If I weren't presenting at the Feynman Conference I wouldn't ask," the professor says. "And if it isn't convenient, Janna and I can rig something. The Commander just thought that you would be able to come up with something more…elegant."

"The conference? You're going?" Nyota asks, sweeping her gaze from Professor Carter to Spock.

"I got the notification yesterday," Professor Carter says as Nyota gives Spock a look.

For months he and Professor Artura have been waiting to hear if their proposal detailing their new lab protocols will be accepted for the conference. Apparently not. The lab rotation improves language acquisition and retention by a statistically impressive percentage over the traditional programs—but, Nyota thinks ruefully, it isn't very flashy or earth-shaking. She wonders if Spock is disappointed.

"What exactly does your scanning program do?" she asks Professor Carter, looking over her shoulder. Janna moves to the head of the table where a metal container the size and shape of a shoebox sits plugged into a number pad.

"Here," Janna says, sitting and motioning to Nyota to take the chair beside her. "The scanner sorts naturally occurring stellar noise from artificial sources. You can adjust it to read light waves or electronic pulses or even gravimetric shifts. A starship with a multi-scanner like this can tell if it is within 1.45 parsecs of another life form without having to do a more detailed biological survey."

"Then why do you—"

"Need a language subroutine?" Janna interrupts. "Because we've had two instances of false positives. Some stars emit radiation that the scanner misidentifies as being the syntactical signature of language."

"That's where you come in," Professor Carter adds. "The scanner is being fooled because the signals have the same ratio of regular and random impulses that most languages exhibit. Commander Spock has an idea for an algorithm that could better judge which signals are too regular to be actual language."

"And you need me to establish exemplars for as many languages as possible," Nyota finishes. At first blush it is an overwhelming task. She would have to somehow quantify the average number of distinct utterances in a measured unit for every language, then run a metrical count and an inflection and tonality check. It could be done—but it would take days.

"You're right," Professor Carter says, tipping her head up at Spock. "She's good."

She flushes at the unexpected compliment. What exactly has Spock said about her to Professor Carter? She meets his gaze across the table.

"If you like," Janna says, "I can help with the data entry. That should make things go much faster."

For the first time Nyota looks carefully at Janna. Her features suggest some Asian ancestry, her skin so pale that it is almost luminescent. She wears her hair cut in an unflattering frizzy dark bowl around her face. Shorter than Nyota and stockier, she has a habit of tilting her head to the side, her eyes hooded as if she is watching everything with detachment.

"Do you mind?"

This from Professor Carter. It isn't how Nyota had hoped to spend the evening, but it might be an interesting challenge. She gives Spock another glance and then says, "Of course not. I'd be glad to help."

Professor Carter and Spock push back and stand up, switching places so that they are sitting near the scanner and Nyota and Janna are in front of the computer monitors. On one screen is Spock's equation to rate the likelihood that a particular signal is artificial or naturally occurring. On the other two screens are lists of known languages, both Federation and others. By assigning each linguistic characteristic a specific weight, Nyota can plug in a number to Spock's equation and send it to the scanner for review.

She runs Standard and Andorian and Vulcan through the equation—easy languages that she knows well—and the scanner correctly identifies them. The work is slow at first—counting the average number of stressed and unstressed syllables in a 10 second utterance, for instance, takes an inordinate amount of time until she gets used to it.

But Janna is a quick study and soon both of them are calling up text samples and running them through the program.

"This is going to take forever," Nyota says after they have finished logging in two dozen samples. "Maybe we should skip the better known languages and focus on the ones further out in the quadrant. After all, any communications officer worth her salt would be able to identify an Andorian signature and wouldn't really need the help of the scanner."

Spock looks across the table at her and says, "The technology will also be available for commercial use. Not every ship equipped with a scanner will be large enough to have a communications officer."

"Yes, but," Nyota objects, "even on a small private yacht a pilot would be able to tell the difference between a solar flare and a radio transmission burst from Andoria."

"Not if the pilot is from a different quadrant and is unfamiliar with the Andorian language."

"How likely is that?"

"The statistical likelihood is less than .0342 percent."

"Then," Nyota says, triumphantly, "it is more efficient if we use our time programming the less familiar languages. The ones that a pilot on a small yacht—"

From the corner of her eye she sees Spock squaring his shoulders, a telltale sign that he is preparing a verbal riposte.

"—from the furthest corner of the galaxy might not know. Given our time constraint, it is only _logical_ to choose the most useful languages."

Spock flicks his eyes down and then up again, as if he is consulting some inward data bank, which, Nyota thinks, he might be.

"Programming them all makes the scanner more accurate," he says, and she nods.

"More accurate," she agrees, "but we have to weigh the accuracy against how much input time that would take. Cadet Lin and I—"

And here she turns and looks squarely at Janna, intending to pull her into the argument. To her surprise, Janna's face is pinched and skewed.

"Are you okay?" Nyota asks quickly, and Janna pulls back slightly, as if the question needs careful deliberation.

"Yes," she says at last. "I'm just—hungry."

Professor Carter laughs and says, "It won't do if I get a reputation as a slave driver. I have some sandwiches in the refrigerator. Let me get you something."

"No, really," Janna says, sounding to Nyota's ear as if she is stressed. "I'm fine. Let's keep working."

They do, making their way through a quarter of the languages listed before Professor Carter calls time.

"I've kept you both too late," she says, checking her wrist chronometer with an exaggerated motion. "The conference isn't for a week. I have enough to go ahead to test the prototype now—and Cadet Lin and I can finish up inputting the other languages before we leave for Leiden."

When she turns off the monitor and stands up, Nyota stretches her arms behind her back and meets Spock's eye.

 _Too tired?_ It is both a question and a dare.

That same flick of his expression—some internal check—and then he stands up, too, and says to Professor Carter, "We can be of assistance later this week if you need us."

At the door Professor Carter thanks them again, and with a start, Nyota realizes that Janna is leaving now, too. That's inconvenient. As they descend the stairs she casts about for some reasonable excuse for stopping at Spock's apartment and letting Janna make her way across campus alone.

_She needs to check with him about something for work? Or, he has something for her that she needs?_

She grins at the _double entendre_.

Spock's stride is so quick that she and Janna soon fall behind. By the time they come abreast of his apartment door, he has keyed it open and is standing in the doorway. Nyota opens her mouth to say something, anything, to gain entry, but he beats her to it.

"As you are both residents of the same dorm," he says, "I assume you can accompany each other adequately."

Nyota's heart gives a little flip. _He doesn't want her to come in?_ The indifferent light in the hall makes reading his facial expression impossible, but she pauses and looks at him as closely as she dares.

"Do you—" she begins, and then stumbles to a halt. If she says too much, Janna may wonder what's up. Better to say nothing now and talk to him later.

Disappointment rushes through her.

"Do you—need anything else?" she says, and Spock gives a curt shake of his head.

"I am expecting a call from my mother," he says. "I will see you in the morning."

And with that she is dismissed. Without turning around she can hear his apartment door shut as she and Janna make their way out of the building.

"I didn't know it was so late," Janna says, and Nyota makes a noncommittal sound.

It _is_ late, but late is relative. Up late _working_ is up late. Up late… _visiting_ …well, time doesn't matter then.

Dimly she is aware that Janna is watching her and she pushes her shoulders back and tries to walk upright into the chilly night air _. A subspace call from his mother._ She berates herself for being petulant. His mother—how can she resent time he spends with his mother? He has lots of news for her, too—chief among them his recent interview with Captain Pike.

Only Nyota knows what a disappointment that interview was—how poorly it had gone.

Her own tears when he had told her, the realization that he would not be on the _Enterprise_ —she pushes that memory aside. Don't think about the future. Focus on now.

Or on tomorrow. _Now_ she is freezing as she makes her way across campus, trying not to let her irritation show.

"How long have you…known Commander Spock?"

An odd hesitation, or is she being paranoid? Nyota darts a glance at Janna before answering.

"Let's see," she says, pumping her arms back and forth to ward off the chill, "I took one of his classes the second semester I was here. And then last spring I was in his dual credit seminar. And I've been his aide since September. So two and half years, I guess."

"He's brilliant," Janna says matter-of-factly. Because they are in between the circles of light cast by the overhead lamps, Nyota can't see Janna's face, but her tone of voice is quiet, almost reverent.

"You've taken one of his classes?"

"Three," Janna says, surprising Nyota. "Every time he teaches a computer class, I try to take it."

Even in the dark Nyota can see Janna angling her body toward her as they walk, as if she is trying to make herself heard in a crowd. For a moment she wonders if this second-year cadet is confessing to a crush—not unheard of, certainly. Nyota has overheard more than one cadet speculating about Spock's anatomy, his ability, his availability.

At one time she had dismissed such talk as idle gossip. Now it makes her angry on Spock's behalf.

And perhaps on her own.

She pauses, considering how to respond. If she says too much, she could give their relationship away. Janna is no fool.

"And Professor Carter, too. I'm so lucky to be her aide. For a long time I wasn't sure Starfleet was the right place for me. They've made me feel like…well, I'm sorry to be rambling on."

A small rise in the ground affords them a view of the dorm as they make their way forward. The building looks black against the background of navy sky, the bright windows a jumble of lit squares.

"It always looks like a rainbow at night," Janna says, and for a moment Nyota looks around. The dorm? The ugly pile of bricks and glass? Not a rainbow by any stretch of the imagination.

Janna isn't looking at the dorm but at the commons nearby, where students are walking singly and in pairs, crisscrossing the grass or following the asphalt pathways. Nyota squints into the scene—the tall overhead light poles, the stars shimmering, the cadets still in uniform.

A diverse crowd, certainly. But not a rainbow, not exactly.

"Hmm," Nyota says, not willing to contradict Janna. After all, everyone sees things differently. Or doesn't see things at all.

At least, that's what she hopes.

X X X X X X X

When the door chimes, the room is flooded with a bright yellow light.

"Would you mind?" Professor Carter says, and Janna hops up from the table and heads to the door. Through the frosted glass inset she can see a vague shadow—Commander Spock's aide, undoubtedly. Janna had overheard the Commander telling Professor Carter that he would ask her to join them.

She doesn't know Uhura well, but she's always been pleasant enough when they see each other at department gatherings. In fact, Janna muses, she probably knows Uhura better than she's known any of the Commander's other aides. In the year and half that she's been working with Professor Carter, she's seen four or five cadets try—and fail—to work with the Vulcan.

Until Uhura. Maybe it has something to do with her being in the communications track instead of computing. Most of the Commander's other aides were in the computer science department—not the easiest people to get along with anyway. Not so…friendly. Or flexible. Or something.

Not that she's complaining. She herself is rather self-contained and private. Conversation tires her. Numbers are easier.

When she pulls open the door, Uhura says,"Hi," and the familiar nimbus of white light illuminates everything for a moment—the light that means recognition. For as long as Janna can remember, sounds have been augmented by waves of color. Voices, especially, evoke auroras of colored light—white lights when people see each other after a separation; green auras surrounding parents and their children, or lovers when they speak to each other. Angry voices shine orange. Fright or worry bathes the speaker in violet.

She was eight years old before she discovered that not everyone saw the world this way, that some cross-wiring in her brain blends sounds and colors so that she can't have one without the other.

"Please do your work quietly," her teacher had chastised her one day as she conjured out loud the numbers of a math problem. When she said the numbers they jumped into the air, colorful, dancing in front of her eyes. Odd integers were always pastels—pale yellows and pinks. Even numbers were red or blue, primary, dark. When she added a row she could tell at a glance if the sum was correct if the colors matched up. Equations with the wrong answers appeared gray.

With practice she was able to work silently, to see the colors just by looking at the numbers. Dubbed a math whiz in elementary school, she was given a series of tutors she quickly outgrew until now, at Starfleet Academy, where she has finally met instructors who take her speed and accuracy for granted, who match her gift with their own.

It hasn't always felt like a gift. She learned not to mention her synesthesia to new acquaintances, but they always found out eventually—a slip of a tongue, perhaps, when she confided her fondness for certain music because it looked bright red. Or more often, rumors that caught up with her, whispered asides and nervous looks as people dodged her in the hall or avoided sitting near her at lunch.

Perhaps her isolation is the reason that reading people continues to be difficult.

Would be impossible if voices didn't appear as washes of color, sometimes the words as distinct as if they are written in the air with a paintbrush, at other times a waterfall of hues.

Once years ago at a regional math competition she met a synesthete who told her that rather than seeing colors, certain sounds made him feel ripples of heat or cold on his skin, and she began to pay closer attention to her other senses. Green, for instance, that indicated love—it was always the same spring grass green, but the feeling it called up had shades of differences.

"I love this ice cream," someone might say, green light flickering around the edges of their image, but that wasn't the same as when Janna heard a mother caution her young daughter about crossing the street.

"Be careful!" the mother called, and a veritable wall of green washed across Janna's vision, as if the mother's words were trying to refashion the world for her child.

How inconvenient that the same color could describe one's attachment to a dessert that denoted a parent's desire to keep her child from harm.

And lovers—they radiated a saturated green. Flashes of green like sparkles when they talked. A green veil enveloping them as they walked together, chatting. But something else, too. For months Janna tried to parse out what made lovers different from ice cream eaters—and finally she knew.

Hunger.

"Come here," she heard one of her high school classmates say in the hall one day, his hand outstretched to a girl, a tendril of green vapor wisping around them—and Janna felt her stomach twist in a knot.

Romantic love and hunger felt the same. How bizarre, she thought.

Until she fell in love, and then the sensation of emptiness and longing convinced her otherwise. Surely the ancient speaker who coined the metaphor of hunger to describe love must have been a synesthete.

The object of her affection—of her hunger—was a popular girl named Marie, someone Janna saw often but spoke to rarely.

"Weirdo bitch," she overheard her mutter once under her breath, Marie's blue dislike floating in the air like a cloud over her head. No matter. Janna waited for quiet opportunities to draw close in the art class they shared, once picking up a notebook Marie had dropped on the floor, holding it up like an offering.

"Leave my stuff alone," Marie said, and Janna nodded as if she had been justly rebuked.

It made no sense, to pine after someone so unkind, so unworthy of her love and devotion.

And yet there it was. A green hunger whenever she heard Marie speak, a willingness to endure a scornful glance if she strayed too near.

She had always thought that people chose who they loved, or at least, that love had reason.

Now she knew better.

"I got a message—" Uhura says, and the white light of recognition is tinged with the pink of uncertainty, the way odd numbers teeter unbalanced.

She follows Uhura down the hall to the room that Professor Carter has set up as an office. Along one wall is a rectangular table with three computer monitors connected to the prototype scanner. Professor Carter and the Commander are sitting there, talking, their comfort and familiarity with each other like flickering lights in shades of yellow.

To her astonishment, when the Commander turns and speaks, his aura changes instantly to a deep, vibrant green.

"Professor Carter needs someone to set up a language subroutine to test her scanning program," he says, and Janna watches Uhura's reply, just as green and tinged with orange. Love? And anger?

Janna blinks but the colors stay the same.

And then the Commander sends some signal with his eyes—his brows rising to where his hair is cut straight across his forehead, and the cadet sends some signal back. The orange shimmer fades and disappears.

_Fascinating._

And disturbing. Unless, of course, their affection is simply that—mutual admiration and respect.

Somehow Janna doesn't think so.

No matter what Commander Spock and his aide say to each other, the green light glimmers around them. Even during their protracted argument— _especially during their argument_ —Janna watches their words like bolts of green lightning ricocheting around the room. Not a real argument, then, not one with anger or distress, but some sort of verbal jousting, some playfulness with words that Janna has never seen before.

Her stomach aches from the emotion.

When Professor Carter pushes back her chair at last and signals the end of the work for the evening, Janna's relief is palpable. Being in their company is exhausting.

To her dismay, Uhura and the Commander follow her to the door and leave when she does.

"As you are both residents of the same dorm," the Commander says after he opens the door to his own apartment, "I assume you can accompany each other adequately."

Nothing about his words implies anything affectionate or even emotional—yet Janna sees them gleaming, green, cramming the space in the hall and fluttering to the ceiling. She almost doubles over with the longing in his tone.

Yet Uhura seems unaware. When she looks back at the Commander standing there, her words are pale pink hesitation—"Do you—need anything else?"

An odd number, trembling in the wind like a bird balancing on a branch.

 _Don't you see,_ Janna wants to say to Uhura, pointing to the Commander's words still lingering in the air like smoke. _Don't you understand,_ she wants to say to the Commander as Uhura's hurt and uncertainty flutter by.

But she says nothing, watching, instead, as Commander Spock fills the hall with his affection and arousal as Uhura says farewell.

"I didn't know it was so late," Janna says, watching the green aura around Nyota fade.

_An experiment._

"How long have you…known Commander Spock?"

"Let's see," Uhura says, "I took one of his classes the second semester I was here. And then last spring I was in his dual credit seminar. And I've been his aide since September. So two and half years, I guess."

There it is, the telltale shimmer of love. Are they, in fact, intimate with each other? Lovers? How risky—how…unexpected.

_How…sad._

"He's brilliant," Janna says. She means it, too. Commander Spock is the only person she's ever known for whom mathematics is as clear and beautiful as it is to her.

"You've taken one of his classes?"

Uhura's words are light tan—curiosity, not jealousy or anger.

"Three," Janna says. "Every time he teaches a computer class, I try to take it. And Professor Carter, too. I'm so lucky to be her aide. For a long time I wasn't sure Starfleet was the right place for me. They've made me feel like…well, I'm sorry to be rambling on."

Until she came to the Academy, she had felt freakish, a _weirdo bitch_. Her refuge in the computer sciences department is just that—a safe place. She can't imagine doing anything to risk it—would not do what Uhura is obviously doing, courting a reprimand, or what the Commander is doing, risking dismissal. No green, stomach-twisting relationship can be worth that. Can it?

And yet—

An image of Marie's face comes to mind, and with it the ghost of desire that always haunts her memories. Would she risk her career for love?

1230 at least—yet the commons is far from empty. She scans the people walking across the grass, the paths, some heading purposefully this way, others in deep conversation with companions at their side. Where she can make out their words, Janna sees flashes of color—like light bulbs going off in the night. Green and pink and tan and white—comforting and beautiful and promising, too, a future that might be hers someday.

"It always looks like a rainbow at night," Janna says, aware that Uhura will not understand her.

"Hmm," Nyota says, her single yellow utterance spoken in kindness, a talisman, Janna hopes, against a future marred by pain.

X X X X X X X

Spock's call to his mother ends as most of his subspace calls to her end—with an unsettled ambivalence about what he said and what he _didn't_ say.

About what he _said_ because he never knows how his mother will interpret his words, mining them for hidden meanings, as if she expects him to deliberately mislead her—as if Vulcans are not always as straightforward and honest as they profess to be.

Which, of course, they aren't.

About what he did _not_ say because his mother is still waiting to hear a verbal declaration of his feelings for her. Is still waiting, perhaps, for such a profession from Sarek.

But even thinking about how to phrase what his mother means to him…the idea makes him stumble, his words trapped in some filter between his heart and his tongue.

His mother spoke first about her planned visit next weekend for her regular radiation treatment, a necessity because of the incomplete light spectrum on Vulcan. When she comes she stays most of the time with her sister Cecilia in Seattle, though she always winkles at least a few hours from Spock. When she initially planned her next treatment, he had warned her about a potential conflict. If his proposal was accepted for the Feynman Conference, he would be in Leiden that weekend instead of in San Francisco.

"Since I have not heard from the conference planners, I assume I am not going. Other presenters have already been notified," he told his mother, thinking of Professor Carter's announcement that morning. He had immediately quashed any professional jealousy. Professor Carter's scanner, after all, had far-reaching implications and a military application, something the conference was designed to showcase.

"I'm sorry," his mother said, and he gave an almost imperceptible shrug. It was illogical to be disappointed about what couldn't be changed.

And then his mother had steered the conversation to a topic he hoped to avoid—his father's recent trip to Earth.

"You look well," Amanda began. It was a statement of fact that required no response, though Spock had the feeling, as he often did when he spoke to his mother, that she was secretly amused by something. "Next time I'll double the amount of soup I send."

Her symbolism wasn't lost on him. He felt himself flush but struggled to keep his expression neutral.

"Your father was very impressed with your teaching assistant," Amanda continued, and this time Spock blinked. An annoying warmth was spreading through his torso. "Is she the same assistant you had when you were here back during the school break?"

His mother doesn't instinctively calculate the odds of everything the way he does, yet he was certain that she was toying with him, that she knew for certain that the assistant he called while he was visiting Vulcan is the same assistant who works for him now.

"Yes, Mother," he said, giving her a look fraught with asperity. "I hired Cadet Uhura at the beginning of this school year."

"How fortunate for you," Amanda said, "and for her."

Spock could think of several different possible meanings of her words, only one which was not freighted with sexual innuendo. He frowned and his mother said, "I apologize if I've made you uncomfortable."

"You have not," Spock said, the lie coming to him so easily that he was astonished. "But I do have work to do, Mother."

"I won't keep you then," she said, her face suddenly serious, "but I need to ask you something."

At once Spock was alarmed. As if she sensed his distress, Amanda smiled and said, "It's nothing unpleasant, at least, I hope not. It's just that Aunt Matilda's estate is finally settled and the lawyer wants to get all the cousins together at the same time to sign the papers. I told Cecilia I'd ask you about your schedule."

"The land deed," Spock said, and Amanda nodded. Her aunt had left a large tract of property to Amanda's and Cecilia's children—Spock and Chris and his sisters—with the understanding that they would conserve it as parkland. None of the cousins were interested in buying out the others or living on the land—its remoteness making it impractical.

Going to Seattle to sign legal papers was not convenient, but Spock agreed at once, as he always agrees to his mother's requests, his substitution for the words he cannot say.

"Maybe you can make a fun day of it," Amanda said. "Take that assistant with you, give her a break from all the work. Your father says you were very concerned when she was sick."

Before he could stop himself, his eyebrows flew into his bangs. His father had been commenting on his worry about Nyota? An educated guess, an intuitive leap on his father's part. Spock was sure he had been careful not to let his feelings show.

But he resolved to be more circumspect in the future.

Powering down the subspace radio after their call, he picks up his comm from the table and makes his way to his bedroom. By now Nyota will be in bed, possibly already asleep. His finger hovers over the contact button for a moment and then he pulls up her number.

A text. He can leave her a message that she will see in the morning as soon as she checks her comm.

Illogical to do so, of course, since they will be together in the lab by 0900. A message now is superfluous. A waste of time and energy.

Not for the first time, he watches his body rebel against his conscious mind. His thumb presses her contact number and he taps out a quick note: _Thank you._

What will she make of such a cryptic message? That he is grateful for her help with Professor Carter's scanner, of course, but more than that. His conversation with his mother has left him restless, unhappy with himself for what he is unable to say.

 _Thank you_ is a start. He hopes Nyota understands.

As he often does when he is too restless to meditate, he picks up his ka'athyra from its place on his dresser and lets his fingers drift across the strings. For a few minutes he sits on the edge of his bed, working his way through the chord progressions he learned as a child, finding solace in none of them. Finally he sets the ka'athyra back and reaches for a small elasticized band instead.

It is one of Nyota's hair bands, a simple rubber circle wrapped in scarlet threads—presumably to match her uniform. She wears this kind of band often, pulling her hair back from her face and up, accenting her cheekbones in a way that never fails to delight him.

This particular band is one he found behind the sofa cushion several days ago. If Nyota misses it, she hasn't bothered to track it down and he hasn't bothered to tell her that he has it. Doubtless she hasn't thought about it at all—so ordinary, so utilitarian an object having almost no intrinsic value, and easily replaced.

But since he found it he has used it as a talisman, holding it between his thumb and forefinger, rolling it gently back and forth as he calms himself before slipping into a light sleep.

At some level he is ashamed, as if what he is doing is a sign of weakness or an admission of his need.

That doesn't stop him from sliding it over the thumb of his left hand, running his fingers against the grain of the threads, imagining that he is touching her hair, the soft skin along the line of her jaw.

When the comm chimes he is momentarily startled and drops the band onto the bed.

"I got your message. Are you okay?"

She isn't whispering, but almost, implying an intimacy that exasperates him with its absence.

"It seemed unwise to invite you in," he says.

"Your mother," Nyota says. "She called?"

"Indeed. She asked me to attend to a legal matter in Seattle later this week."

For the second time that night his body is taken over by some entity other than his logic and he hears himself, as if from a great distance, say, "Would you care to go? My business should not take long and Chris will be there. He asks after you often."

That's so; his cousin Chris met Nyota two months ago when a hover bus accident landed Spock in the hospital for a couple of days. Since then Chris has asked about her every time he calls—innocent inquiries, though it might be instructive to watch the two of them interact.

"Of course I would!" she says at once, the tone of her voice unmistakably joyful, even to his ear.

Too late, his reason kicks in. This… _lark_ …is a mistake. Taking time from work and traveling together on public transport without an official reason could invite scrutiny. His cousins will be curious and may ask questions—may even say something later to their parents or to his. The potential for something untoward happening is disturbingly high.

He parts his lips to tell her that on further reflection he should go alone—but before he can, he hears her say breathlessly, "Gaila's coming! Got to go!" and the comm goes dead.

So.

He sets his comm on the bedside table and looks around for the hair band.

Worry about what cannot be changed is illogical. Disappointment about what cannot be changed is illogical.

 _An ineffective mantra tonight._ He runs his hand over the duvet, feeling around for the hair band.

It must have fallen on the floor, but no, it isn't there. Nor under the bed. Nor behind the headboard.

Tugging the sheets from the bed he shakes them, gently at first, and then with enough force to send them snapping from his hand.

Still, the hair band is missing.

He lies down reluctantly, wrapping himself in the duvet.

It will turn up. All things that are hidden eventually are seen, are found out.

The thought is both disturbing and a comfort.

He falls asleep, anxious, hoping.

**A/N: Chris Thomasson, Spock's cousin, appears in multiple fics, though he first meets Uhura in "The Visitor" (which also details the hover bus crash).**


	8. Special Requests

**Disclaimer: I do not own nor profit from these characters.**

Spock has never been one to dither. That's not to say that he doesn't weigh his options—sometimes in obsessive detail, Nyota thinks—but once he comes to a conclusion, he moves forward.

So she is surprised that he takes more than a day to decide how they will travel from San Francisco to Seattle. He could sign out an Academy flitter, but that would mean filing a flight plan and registering them both as passengers. Public transport is more anonymous but far less convenient, requiring someone to pick them up at the station in Seattle.

Even more discussion centers around the explanation for why she is going—her _alibi_ , Nyota calls it, not without humor and also not without some irritation. Who's going to notice or care if she makes a day trip to Seattle?

"Quite possibly no one," Spock says, checking his computer screen for transport times. "But being seen traveling together when I am the only one with a reason for going would invite…speculation."

She knows this is true but it frustrates her. How tiring it is to have to be so careful, so circumspect in public all the time. A careless word, a look too familiar—and people would start to talk.

They settle at last on a short visit she will make to a researcher who occasionally collaborates with Spock on circuitry design for artificial language programs. The researcher, Sanjit Patil, has built a new hardware mockup of a voder that can be modified for any computer that runs his software. Unlike more traditional voders, Sanjit's learns the inflection, tone, and dialect of the user almost instantly and then uses that same language for communication. When Spock suggests that Nyota would be a safer courier to pick up the voder at Sanjit's workshop in Seattle and bring it back to the Academy for testing than trusting it to the mail, Sanjit agrees.

"But that seems like so much trouble," he tells Nyota during a conference call. "Too bad you don't have another reason to come. Maybe something else to do while you're here."

"I don't mind," she says, rolling her eyes at Spock as they finalize their plans in his office on Wednesday afternoon. "It will be good to see you again."

On Thursday morning they meet at the transport station at Baker Street, not the one closest to the Academy, and catch the 0930 hover bus. The seats are not numbered or reserved and they head to seats separated by several rows—another precaution that reminds Nyota—as if she needed any reminding—that they have to be careful.

Spock reads a PADD the entire time but she looks out the window, glad to be away from the campus, even for a few hours.

And maybe longer. Just in case they miss the last bus back tonight—a distinct possibility if they have a late dinner with Spock's cousins—she has brought a change of clothes in her bag.

Just in case.

When the bus lands she is separated from Spock by the crowd disembarking. Standing on her toes and craning her neck, she scans the people ahead of her but doesn't see him. An oddity—he is so tall that she rarely loses him in a group.

Carried along by the press of the passengers, she bobs up once, twice, looking for him. Suddenly she feels a hand at her elbow and there is Chris, Spock's cousin, leading her to the side.

"Welcome!" he says cheerfully over the ambient noise of the station. He looks as he did a few months ago when she met him for the first time—shorter and stouter than Spock, and with sandy hair that looks as if he uses his fingers for a comb. His clothes are slightly rumpled, slightly out of style—endearing, Nyota decides—and despite his huge grin, she immediately sees a family resemblance, something indefinable in his eyes when he is amused that reminds her of Spock's unsmiling smile.

Impulsively she reaches out and crooks an arm around his neck for an impromptu hug.

"I've lost your cousin!" she says into Chris' ear, and he nods.

"Only for a moment," Spock says from behind her and she lets go of Chris and shifts her bag to her other shoulder.

"Where did you wander off to?" Chris says, and Nyota sees Spock arch an eyebrow at him.

Chris offers to take Nyota's bag but she shakes her head. Just as she remembered, Chris' mannerisms are courtly, polite, solicitous in a way that she finds both disconcerting and appealing. How nice to be worried over, she thinks, as he hurries to unlatch the door of his flitter and takes her hand to help her into the front seat. How…quaint.

"We have time to run around our old stomping grounds if you don't mind," Chris says, starting up the flitter and directing his comments to Spock in the rear seat. "Anna and Rachel are going to meet us at 2 at the lawyer's office."

"If you wish," Spock says. "As long as Cadet Uhura is in Fremont by then."

Nyota senses Chris turning to her in surprise and she says, "Oh, yes. I have to pick up a piece of equipment. One of Commander Spock's collaborators has a workshop there. When we found out that he was coming up to sign the estate papers, I offered to get the voder from Sanjit. Kill two birds with one stone."

It isn't untrue—not exactly—but she feels bad giving her _alibi_ this way to Chris. It is one thing to spin out the voder story if she runs into someone from Starfleet. It is quite another to deliberately mislead someone she trusts and likes.

"Well," Chris says, focusing on the road ahead, "I'll make sure to get you there on time."

They pass most of the tallest buildings and veer into a stretch of residential and park land. In a few minutes Chris throttles down the flitter and sets it neatly in a grassy parking area near the road.

"This," he says, unlatching the doors with a hiss, "is where Spock saved my life."

Nyota darts a glance in the back seat and sees a quirk at the corner of Spock's mouth.

"An exaggeration," he says, and Chris says, "Don't believe him. I'm basically an honest person, though I have been known to speak in metaphors. Come on. I'll show you."

He leads the way from the parking area to a slow-moving river running parallel to the road. A shallow weir blocked by a fence interrupts the flow of the water, sending it cascading a few feet before resuming its leisurely way. Several people are walking along a path beside the river. In the distance Nyota can hear a dog barking and children shouting. A recreation place, not one that looks dangerous or alarming.

"I know what you're thinking," Chris says, taking Nyota's elbow and steering her toward the fence. "How can someone almost die in such an idyllic setting?"

"Yes," she smiles, "I was thinking that—or something close to it."

"See that concrete weir?" Chris says, letting go of her elbow and pointing to the river. "Before they put up this fence, you could walk out along that weir. One day I was doing just that and I fell in."

"And you can't swim," Nyota finishes for him, but he shakes his head.

"Her powers of observation are faulty, Spock," Chris says as Spock steps up beside him, his hands clasped behind his back, his shoulders tilted slightly forward in attention. "I thought you said she was an excellent assistant, and yet she doesn't recognize my obvious athletic ability."

"Because you hide it so well," Spock says, and Nyota laughs. She had seen some of this same witty repartee when Chris stayed in San Francisco for several days after Spock's bus accident—a time that seems so long ago. Spock's broken wrist had given him trouble for weeks after his cast was off, though he never complained. One day she walked into his office the moment before he broke a stylus—snapped it in two and tossed it into the recycler. When he looked up and saw her there he flushed visibly and said, "That stylus was too short to be useful," though in the instant before he had broken it she had seen him struggle with it—a brief slip as it skittered across the surface of his PADD, his stiff fingers unable to control its motion.

Looking up, she sees Chris' eyes on her.

"Don't disparage me in front of the cadet," Chris says. "Actually, I'm an excellent swimmer. Don't laugh! But when I fell I hit my head on the weir and knocked myself out. Your Commander," he says, motioning to Spock, "leaped in and kept me from drowning."

The unexpected seriousness of the story makes her gasp.

"A fair exchange," Spock says, "since you saved me from drowning earlier that summer."

"Here?" Nyota asks, and Chris says, "On Vulcan. During a flash flood."

"It was an interesting summer," Spock adds, and for a moment Nyota is certain that the cousins are teasing her, reeling her in with a lie.

But no. When she looks at Spock and then at Chris, they return her look calmly, quietly, like men content to recall their adventures without flourish or fanfare.

For a few moments she stands listening to the river, the voices of children, the dogs in the distance. Then Chris says, "Where now? Should I show her the woods where you saved the lives of the neighborhood bullies?"

"What!"

"Indeed," Chris says, "he never told you about the time my sisters and I were ready to kill several bullies and would have, too, if he hadn't talked us out of it?"

"Never," Nyota says, glancing up at Spock, at the amusement in his eyes, at the way he watches her obliquely, his body angled away from her as they walk back to the flitter.

And something else, too. The way he bristles—yes, _bristles_ , when Chris opens the flitter door and offers her his hand to help her in.

Nothing overt—nothing Chris seems to see. But she feels it in the air. An annoyance. Or a possessiveness.

She could, of course, be imagining things. Or wanting to see something that isn't there. After all, they have to be careful—even here, even now with Chris. Spock wouldn't give in to a momentary feeling of anger and risk giving them away.

_She remembers the broken stylus._

The flitter ride through Chris' old neighborhood is short. On the way he points out changes to Spock.

"Remember Mr. Ling? He died last year and a young couple moved in his house. And the saplings we helped Mrs. Auden plant. Look at them now."

Spock says nothing but is attentive to everything as they pass by. At one time this must have felt like home, Nyota realizes, although Spock has shared very little of his childhood with her.

Or she with him. In many ways they are still strangers to each other.

"Mom's going to be upset that she missed you," Chris says. "She and Dad will be back from the conference in the morning. There," he says, pointing to a large brick house on the right, "that's where I grew up. Where we got into a little bit of mischief."

From the corner of her eye Nyota sees Chris flick a glance into the rear view mirror. Then he does something inexplicable—he holds up his thumb, and Nyota sees that same nonsmiling smile cross Spock's features.

"I need to stop at my apartment to pick up the legal documents," Chris says a few minutes later as he parks the flitter outside a large brick complex. "We have time if you want something to drink."

Chris' apartment is small and spartan, a testament to a life lived chiefly at his office and his work as a therapist. As he fidgets in the kitchen with glasses and ice, Nyota wanders around the living area, looking at the few pictures he has on the wall.

"Your cousins?" she asks Spock as he trails behind her, looking over her shoulder.

"Anna," he says, motioning toward a picture of a tall dark-haired woman wearing a loose maternity smock, "and Rachel."

Even from her photograph Nyota can tell that Rachel is the liveliest of the four cousins. A year younger than Spock and with the same dark hair as her sister, she is smiling into the camera so broadly that Nyota feels herself smiling in return.

"Here," Chris says, handing her a glass of water. "They want to cook a meal for you tonight. Do you have time?"

Somehow the question is not hers to answer—Nyota knows that and watches Spock instead. She can see him doing some internal calculus—some weighing of possibilities, some measurement of odds.

"The last transport is at 1030," Spock says, and Chris replies, "Good. Plenty of time."

For the first time since they arrived, Nyota sees Spock's shoulders relax, his hands drift to his side instead of pinned behind his back.

He's home.

She recognizes the moment when he passes from being a tourist, a visitor, to feeling like family again. She goes through the same reorientation each time she goes home—that awkward hour of relearning each other's body language, of moving back into the rhythm of speech and silence.

The rest of the afternoon is a blur. Finding Sanjit's workshop proves surprisingly difficult, and by the time Chris and Spock drop her off, they are late for their own meeting with the lawyer. For the next two hours she listens politely as Sanjit details everything to know about his new voder. To be fair, Nyota is interested—for the first hour. But as Sanjit waxes eloquent about the advantages of chromium diodes over regular copper filaments, her attention fades and she finds herself casting surreptitious glances at the clock on her comm face.

_What's taking so long?_

And then Sanjit says something so unexpected that Nyota is flabbergasted.

"How is the Commander doing these days? I mean, since his annulment?"

"Pardon me?"

_His what?_

"I know I shouldn't have said anything, but it's the same for me," Sanjit says, and Nyota looks at him closely. Sanjit is hardly older than Nyota—and a rare human graduate of the Vulcan Science Academy. He is so small and dark that he would slip unnoticed into a crowd, so unprepossessing that a casual acquaintance would never suspect that he is a computer genius. "My parents have chosen a bride for me, too. I'm not a traditionalist, but I find the idea something of a…relief."

Dimly Nyota is aware that her mouth is parted open and she shuts it.

"I'm not sure—" she begins, and Sanjit nods.

"Of course, my parents won't force me if I object," he says. "But I am concerned about the Commander. My friends back on Vulcan said he ended it suddenly. I just hope he's okay. You know."

Quickly she scrambles to think what Sanjit is saying. From brushing against Spock's own memory she knows that something happened when he was on Vulcan during the school break.

But that was before the hover bus crash, before they became intimate with each other. _An annulment?_

The comm chiming in her hand startles her—Chris signaling that he is outside in the flitter at last.

On the ride back from Sanjit's workshop Nyota is quiet, listening to Chris and Spock chatting about mutual friends, sharing updates on their work. As they near Anna's house where they will have a meal, Nyota feels her heart slowing its racing, lets herself be lulled by the cadence and timbre of the conversation.

_They still have much to learn about each other. Give it time._

X X X X X X X X

All day Chris has felt like a spy—his mother's fault, since she told him that Amanda was concerned—no, _curious_ —about what was happening between Spock and his teaching assistant.

"Why doesn't she just ask him?" Chris had protested when his mother suggested he might _figure out_ what was going on.

But he already knows the answer. Intensely private, Spock tells nothing before he is ready.

Despite his misgivings, Chris had indeed watched Spock and Nyota closely. Two months ago in San Francisco he noted their ease with each other—Nyota mother-henning Spock when his wrist was broken, Spock more comfortable in his skin around her than Chris can ever remember him being with anyone else. Something was up, Chris was sure.

Yet their mannerisms today have been formal, remote, more polite than friendly. At the transport station, for instance. From his vantage point away from the crowd, Chris watched Spock dismount the bus and head forward without looking back, leaving Nyota to make her way through the press of people.

And in the flitter, their conversation impersonal, cool. An errand bringing her to Seattle—the timing of their traveling together nothing more than a coincidence. Could he have been mistaken, that what looked several months ago like courtship was nothing more than courtesy and respect, the kind of friendship that professors and students often share? Nothing inappropriate or untoward?

As he had when he first met her, Chris felt himself drawn to Nyota in a way that was surprising. She is, after all, younger than he is by at least ten years—and a cadet, in school, heading off to a career in space soon enough. _There is no future here_ , he reminded himself, though when she made quick rejoinders to his jokes or laughed with him, her eyes lit up in a way that was magnetic—

Drawing Spock, too—for every time Chris carved out a moment of private time to chat with Nyota, there was his cousin, suddenly at his side, making his presence felt.

_A message._

Chris didn't need to play _mailman_ to hear what was being said.

The rest of the afternoon he kept a running tally of how many times Spock tracked Nyota's movements with his eyes, letting his sight drift past Chris to where she was walking beside the river, or settling herself in the flitter, or leaning forward to examine something more closely. He wasn't exactly caressing her with his gaze—but she was always in his field of vision.

After they dropped her off at the computer workshop, Chris said, "You know, I'm so glad you brought Nyota with you. I'd really like to get to know her better."

"Her schedule as a third year cadet precludes her from enlarging her social circle," Spock said promptly, and Chris hid his smile.

_Bingo._

At the lawyer's office he planned to winkle out more information—for his mother and Amanda, naturally—about Nyota's background, her interests, but he and Spock were late arriving, and as soon as they entered the office, Chris could see from the strain in Anna's face that something was wrong.

"I have to talk to you," Rachel said, corralling Chris and putting one arm through his.

"Okay," he agreed, letting himself be pulled to the sofa in the empty waiting area while Anna and Spock sat nearby and quietly exchanged greetings.

"I need a favor," Rachel said, her voice hoarse and her face flushed. "Don't say anything until you hear me out."

"Okay," he said again, this time with a growing trepidation.

"You know that Sarah and I have been trying to have a baby?"

He nodded. Sarah was Rachel's partner of two years, a local painter who had recently opened her own gallery in Medina, across the lake from Seattle. When they had first considered children, they had asked Chris to be a sperm donor so that Sarah could carry their child. He had politely but firmly refused—and Rachel said she understood, that they would look into cloning and other technologies.

"Well," Rachel said, pursing her lips, "I'm asking you again to help us. I've spent all my savings and…nothing. Turns out sperm really are a pretty efficient way to deliver some DNA—"

"No."

Rachel had blinked and frowned and blinked again. The baby of the family, and a generally cheerful one at that, she wasn't used to being told no, to running into roadblocks this way.

"Chris," she said, and he felt his face grow hot. Spock was watching him, his expression neutral but his posture ill at ease. "I don't understand why you won't help us."

"I can't—explain it," he says, his anger making him stumble over his words. "I don't want—to create a child—that I can't have responsibility for. I don't feel right about it."

Just then the receptionist returned to her desk and Chris leaned away from Rachel, averting his face, hoping to discourage her from saying anything else.

The actual signing of the estate papers had been simple, and by the time they were finished at the lawyer's office, the tension he had felt—the irritation he had with Rachel for treating his wishes so cavalierly—faded.

Now Nyota comes out of the workshop carrying a bulky satchel—the equipment she said she had come to retrieve, apparently. In the seat beside him Spock moves quickly to open the flitter door and steps outside.

Because Chris is sitting idly, he sees something he would have missed if he hadn't been watching Nyota as she picks her way gracefully down the walkway to the parked flitter. Lifting her eyes briefly to where Spock stands waiting, she flashes of look full of grief or dismay. Just for a moment—and then her expression lightens and she lets the satchel strap slip from her shoulder and slide down her arm until she can hand it to Spock.

 _What was that about?_ On the way to Anna's house Chris surveilles them both from the corner of his eye.

Anna greets them at the door with a glass of wine.

"If I know my brother," she says, reaching up fondly to Chris and rubbing his afternoon beard with the back of her hand, "you deserve some sort of reward."

Nyota accepts a glass but Spock shakes his head at Anna and she offers the second glass to Chris instead. Anna's young son, dark like his mother, runs up, raising his arms to be lifted into the air. Spock and Nyota hang back slightly.

"Aren't you going to introduce us?"

This from Rachel, perched on a stool at the counter. She slides off the stool and slips up to Spock, circling him with her arms.

"I haven't seen you in forever!" she says, releasing him and stepping back to give him an intense look. "What have you been up to!"

"This is my assistant, Cadet Uhura," Spock says, glancing at Nyota. At once Rachel turns to her and looks at her carefully, _inspects_ her. Nyota appears to flinch under her glare. "These are my cousins Anna and Rachel."

"Please," she says, "call me Nyota."

"You're a cadet at the Academy?" Rachel says, and Nyota nods.

"My third year," she says. "I hope to graduate next May."

"You're in computer science?"

"Oh, no," she says, glancing up at Spock. "I'm in communications."

"But I thought you were Spock's assistant," Rachel says, leaning forward and offering Nyota more wine.

"I am currently an adjunct in the language department at the Academy," Spock says. "Cadet Uhura helps me primarily with my work there."

"The language department? Get him to tell you about how we used to try to send messages to each other," Rachel says. "Remember that, Spock? I haven't thought about _mailman_ in a long time."

"She already knows," Chris chimes in. "I saw her do a pretty good job with _mailman_ when Spock was in the hospital."

Again Chris sees that same odd look—some mixture of sorrow and worry—cross Nyota's face as she hazards a glance in Spock's direction.

Is she worried that she's being too personal? Too familiar for a teacher's aide?

Anna's husband, Aaron, greets them then and herds everyone into a room with a circle of stuffed chairs and love seats. Before long the conversation turns to news of the day—an uptick in political unrest in the Pacific Rim states, a failed rice crop in the Indian subcontinent. Soon Aaron takes his son to bed and Anna checks the meal in the oven.

"Bring that bottle of wine in here," Rachel calls, and Anna sticks her head from the kitchen and says, "Maybe you should slow down."

"Maybe you should shut up," Rachel says.

The room suddenly becomes very still.

At first Chris assumes this is the normal teasing between sisters, the give and take of every family—but something in Rachel's tone is too shrill, her actions too exaggerated. He watches her swing her wine glass in the air like a trophy.

He's seen Rachel drunk only once before, that time by his hand.

One night during her first year at college, Rachel had shown up unannounced at Chris' apartment, weeping, inconsolable—a love relationship gone sour, a professor who _hated_ her, serious misgivings about continuing in her biology major. From what Chris could gather between her crying jags, Rachel was ready to drop out and move back home. Something drastic had to be done.

He plied her with several beers, one after the other, until she was no longer snuffling into her sleeve. As the night went on she helped herself to several more before graduating to Chris' skimpy stash of good bourbon. By morning it was gone, too, and Rachel was as sick as he had ever seen her.

For two hours Chris debated hauling her to the local emergency clinic but decided in the end to call his mother instead. Descending on his apartment with her medical kit, Cecilia was furious, and neither Chris nor Rachel ever spoke of that episode again.

His little sister is obviously drunk now—or getting there.

Rachel is never unkind. When they were children she had always been the one that feral cats drifted to, allowing themselves to be reformed under her generous ministrations. The only trouble she ever got into in school was when she hit a school bully so hard with a book that his eyes rolled back into his head and his knees buckled underneath him—all to stop him from taunting another child.

Her ugly retort to Anna—her angry grip on her wine glass—are not her, not the girl—the young _woman_ —who volunteers in a children's hospital, who paints little watercolors as birthday cards, who is quick-witted to a fault and unhappy when she isn't physically touching someone.

Anna rubs her hands down her apron when she returns from the kitchen and Rachel glances up at her.

"Where's the bottle?"

"Rachel—"

"Dammit," Rachel says, and Chris says, "Simmer down."

"Don't tell me what to do," Rachel says, her mouth contorted, her head thrown back. Chris slides forward in his chair, preparing to stand.

Rachel notices, too.

"Don't bother me," she says, waving her arm in the air.

"You're drunk," Chris says, and then Rachel gives a barking laugh.

"I am not!" she retorts. "And if I am, it's your fault. Again."

"Rachel—" Anna says, and Rachel waves her hand dismissively at her sister.

"You stay out of this," she says. "You have no right to lecture me."

Chris sees Nyota and Spock exchanging a look— _Should we leave?_ The evening is quickly spiraling out of control.

"Rachel," he says, and at once he realizes he has made a mistake. Rather than calming her down, his voice drives up her frenzy.

"Don't patronize me," she almost spits. "And don't act like you care. I'm not asking you for much."

Instantly Chris is furious.

"How can you say that! You are asking for something extraordinary! I can't help how I feel about it. I'm just not comfortable—"

"Believe me, if I didn't need you, I wouldn't ask," Rachel says, "and please spare me your whining about your feelings. If I was worried about feelings, I would have asked Spock. He wouldn't care."

She makes a noise in her throat like a harsh laugh.

"Would you, Spock? You're the only other male relative I have, and you probably can't have children—at least not without some expensive technological mumbo jumbo—at least not ones that aren't—that aren't—"

 _Alien._ The word hangs in the air, unspoken yet heard by everyone.

Across the room Nyota gets to her feet.

The expression on Spock's face is so anguished, so naked, that Chris feels himself rising from his chair with a vague notion of grabbing Rachel around the neck and forcing her to apologize.

"We should go," Nyota says, taking three brisk steps until she is standing beside the chair where Chris hears her murmur.

"Let's go."

Her hand is turned palm upward, beckoning, but Spock doesn't move.

"Spock," Rachel says, her voice shaking, "I'm…sorry. I shouldn't have—"

And in a whirlwind Spock is up and at the door. To his right Chris sees Anna, her mouth parted to speak, and Rachel, her legs tucked up, her chin resting on her knees, still on the loveseat.

Nyota flings a glance backward and follows Spock into the yard, and after giving Anna a look— _I'll call you_ —Chris walks out.

In the light from the overhead streetlamp Chris watches as Spock walks to the road where he stops. Immediately Nyota is beside him, saying something, though from this distance Chris can't make out her words. They stand stiffly apart, their hands at their sides, but their posture gives them away. They are reeds bending toward each other in a pond, or tall grass leaning in tandem in the wind.

Chris waits a few moments to give them space before walking across the yard to the flitter.

"She doesn't mean it," he says as a way to call them. "She's just…upset."

He sees some signal between them before they head to the flitter and climb in, Spock in the front seat this time. When he starts up the engine and turns to adjust his mirror, Chris sees Nyota's hand hooked over the far side of the front seat, her fingers resting lightly on Spock's shoulder.

"Listen," Chris says, "everything will look different in the morning. You don't have to rush off tonight. It's late."

Spock's face is angled away from him toward the window. Nyota, however, is watching Chris as he throttles the flitter up.

Hesitating only a moment, he decides to abandon the pretense that he doesn't know what these two people mean to each other. If his honesty makes Spock uncomfortable, so be it. He probably can't feel any worse than he already does.

"Come stay with me at my apartment," he says. "I have a guest room."

When Spock says nothing—not even bothering to make some ritual protest about the impropriety of such an offer—Chris is hopeful that he might accept—that they might sit up late eating the vegetable pizza Chris remembers in his freezer and talking over old times—embellishing them for Nyota's benefit, soothing each other with companionship and stories.

He sees Nyota's fingers on Spock's shoulder tighten.

"We could use a lift to the transport station," she says, her words exacting an unspoken promise of secrecy.

X X X X X X

It isn't the last bus scheduled for the run from Seattle to San Francisco, but it is still relatively empty. Spock sits in the aisle seat across from the doors—his Starfleet training automatically putting him where he can see any intruders. Instead of passing him and sitting further back—a precaution they had followed on the run up—Nyota ducks into the window seat beside him. He glances at her once—her chin is set in what he has come to recognize as determination beyond bargaining—so he says nothing.

From start to finish the trip is little over an hour, including the walk back to the Academy from the transport station. They are mostly silent, though Spock is aware that Nyota is watching him—or at least trying to when she isn't pretending interest in the scenery. He has seen his mother giving him the same scrutiny in the past—a worried crease between her brows when he was less than forthcoming about whatever was on his mind. "Don't block me," she sometimes scolded him, though lightly. They both knew he would tell her what he wanted to when he wanted to—a stubbornness she accused him of learning from his father.

As they pass the darkened cafeteria Nyota says, "Do you want to get some dinner? At the deli?" and he considers whether or not he needs to eat. He isn't hungry, but Nyota might be. It is, after all, later than she usually takes a meal.

"If you like," he says, and he hears her sigh.

The young man who Nyota often speaks to is manning the market deli tonight. _Vijay._ Looking up from the paper magazine he is leafing through at the counter, Vijay waves as they enter and make their way to the cooler in the back. Nyota selects one of the vegetarian wraps, and when Spock makes no move to follow suit, she takes another and hands it to him as they settle at one of the round tables nearby.

"You know," she says, opening her sandwich, "I've eaten my weight in these soggy wraps this year."

Without planning to he glances at her, her elbows propped on the table, her legs tucked up under her chair, and estimates her current weight. He hefts the wrap in his hand and multiples it. Seven hundred seventy two point four. She would have to eat that many.

Something in the motion of his hand or the narrowing of his gaze tips her off to what he is doing and she laughs.

"You're so predictable," she says, smiling, and at once he feels the same oppressive sorrow return.

"Not at all," he says. "There are many things I have not told you."

"Tell me now," she says, and he feels his heart speed up. His mouth is suddenly too dry to eat or speak and he sets his unopened wrap on the table.

Nyota chews slowly and he hears her swallow.

"The annulment?" she prompts. "Sanjit mentioned something…."

He hasn't been keeping information from her, not really, not precisely. Nor does he offer much now.

"It is…traditional…for Vulcan parents to arrange bondmates for their children," he says, unable to look her in the face, burdened by the scale of what he is not saying. "My bondmate and I were…ill-suited…and we ended our association when I went home at the break."

She's shocked—even he can see that. Her hand holding her wrap drifts downward until it rests on the tabletop. He takes a breath and lets it out slowly, willing his heart to slow down.

If she asks him for details he isn't certain how he will respond. Even now, even after his surprise at how much joy he feels when he and Nyota are together, even when he automatically calculates the minutes of their separation and counts down the fraction of time until he sees her after being apart—even now he is still angry with T'Pring, still startled at how her rejection has shaken him.

How _alien_ she made him feel.

How _alien_ he feels again from Rachel's unspoken word.

But Nyota doesn't ask. He sees her fingers unfurl from her wrap and her hand stealing across the table, reaching his own and touching his fingertips lightly before pulling back.

"I'm…sorry," she says, and he looks up, trying to gauge her meaning. Sorry that he hasn't shared this information with her sooner, more freely? Or sorry that they are here together now? That they have let themselves be drawn into an intimacy that consigns them to hurried moments of sex and private conversation?

Or sorry for some other reason altogether—for him, perhaps, on his behalf, for the anger he is unable to hide, or the anguish he feels every time he remembers Rachel's " _he wouldn't care_ "?

"I should go," he says, pushing back his chair. He half expects Nyota to stay seated, letting him exit alone, but she rises, too, throwing the remainder of her sandwich in the trash near the front counter.

"My treat," Vijay says, sweeping his hand at Nyota as she sidles up to the credit reader. "On the house."

"Thanks," Spock hears her say as he makes his way out the door.

Pausing at the intersection where the pathways diverge—one leading back to the campus and the other in the opposite direction to the faculty housing, Spock listens as Nyota's footfalls catch up with him. Turning, he sees her hurrying up, her face in shadow.

"Do you want me to walk you back to your dorm?" he asks, but she shakes her head. Her refusal shouldn't surprise him but it does. A harbinger of how they will relate from now on? He nods once and turns to walk to the apartment building.

Behind him Nyota calls out softly.

"Wait!" she says. "I'm coming with you."

" _He wouldn't care,"_ Rachel had said, but he does. Not the possibility that he may never father a child, nor the idea that someone may consider him an unsuitable, unnatural being—but the recognition that deep down he will always be an _alien_ , no matter where he is—on Vulcan or on Earth—even to his cousins, even to the people who know him best.

How can he expect anything other from Nyota?

"Not necessary," he says over his shoulder.

His mother has chastised him more than a few times about being so brusque, about disregarding the feelings of others this way. But what his mother has never understood—and what he is sure Nyota does not understand as she watches him retreat—is that the feelings of others are exactly why he retreats so quickly, without ceremony. He cannot bear the idea of Nyota's grief and disapproval, or worse, of her pity.

Fishing in his pocket for his key card, he feels a heaviness in his side that presages a long meditation session tonight.

"I'm coming with you."

Her voice, so close that she must be at his elbow.

Even in the dark he can see that same determination in her expression that dared him to say something when she sat beside him in the hover bus seat.

"It would be wiser if you returned to your dorm," he says, and she nods.

"It would."

Not for the first time, he realizes that her acquiescence doesn't equal compliance.

Inside his apartment she approaches him first. As soon as he locks the door, she reaches for him, bringing her hands to his own, twining their fingers together. Immediately he senses her concern—her worry about his silence, his distance.

_There are many things I have not told you._

"Then tell me," she says aloud and he lets her feel his frustration with thoughts and feelings he is unable to pin to words.

"Then show me," she says, and he pulls back the curtain the barest fraction. T'Pring and his last conversation with her, and his father's suggestion that he consider T'Rhea as a bondmate—and while he does, he is aware of her wonder— _a bondmate?_ —and her leaping ahead to the next question, and the next— _why do Vulcans do this? Is this something you need?_

Suddenly he is so tired that he struggles not to sag forward. The disappointments of the day, the stress of travel, the fear of losing her—

"Come on," she says, unhooking one hand and leading him forward down the hall to the bedroom. "No more talking tonight."

They undress quickly but then are unaccountably shy with each other, slipping beneath the duvet tentatively, as if they are travelers in a strange land. Again Nyota reaches out first, stroking Spock's cheek with her palm, letting her fingers brush over his lips. He watches her steadily and she draws her hand across his brow and down around his ear. At last she sees him begin to surrender to sensation, his eyes fluttering closed, his breathing deepening, trapping her waist with one hand and sliding her toward him until they are lying chest to chest and thigh to thigh.

They make love slowly, more tenderly than usual, as if they are handling precious china or fragile glass. As if something is on the verge of breaking or falling apart, which, they both know, is quite possibly true.

Their unhurried motions are more intense for all their lack of speed, as if they are caught in a time vortex that whirls them around with the colors and heat of stars.

His hand drifts to her temple.

 _There are many things I have not told you,_ and she says _you will_ , and he knows she is willing to wait until he can.

A waterfall of gratitude—and he pulls her with him over the precipice of desire, falling with her until they are both breathless, drowning, gasping for air, bobbing to the surface limp and warm and slippery.

Afterward as he listens to Nyota's breathing deepen as she falls asleep, her head on his shoulder, he thinks again of Rachel's words—those spoken and the one not said—and he tries to find some measure of peace. It is the first unkind thing she has ever said to him—the first unthinking prejudice she has ever shown, and holding her to account may be unfair.

Months later she will offer an atonement. The day after Vulcan's collapse she will quit her job as a research biologist and work fulltime as a citizen journalist helping children separated from their families, will publish numerous accounts of people reunited and those still searching, will detail the challenges of the Vulcan diaspora and drum up public support for the colony world. She will be the spokesperson against a surprising upswing in anti-Vulcan sentiment and will skewer the Federation members whose attitude is thinly-disguised race hatred, a _they had it coming_ bigotry that she mocks so relentlessly that the rusty economic wheels turn and member states cough up enough money to help resettle the remaining Vulcans.

And she will serve as a foster mother to two Vulcan orphans, without Sarah, who tries and fails to join Rachel in her obsessive concern. When the older boy's distant relatives claim him at last, she is heartbroken, inconsolable, fierce in her determination not to lose the younger boy, too. Her petition to the newly assembled High Council for permission to adopt is refused twice—and only after she begs Spock for his help and he intercedes—the Ambassador's son, a Starfleet officer, a decorated member of the _Enterprise_ crew—is she allowed to rest at night knowing that her son will not be taken away.

Only then will Spock forgive her, letting go of his anger finally and completely.

Only then.

But not now. Now his anger keeps him awake, makes him uncharacteristically restless. Asleep on his arm, Nyota seems to sense it, too, and she rouses soon, bleary-eyed, sweaty.

"What time is it?" she asks, and he answers immediately.

"0147.23."

As he knew she would, she laughs quietly.

"Can't you be more precise?"

He doesn't answer and she adds, "I better go."

He makes no move but keeps his arm crooked around her shoulders. For a moment she struggles to sit up but then lies back down.

"Do you want me to go?"

"Someone may notice if you stay," he says.

"You didn't answer my question."

"It would be best if you left."

"Agreed, but that's not what I asked you."

He breathes out heavily and pulls her tighter.

"Is that your answer?" she says, placing her palm flat on his chest.

He slips his fingers under hers.

_No more talking tonight._

Illogical to let her stay. He balances the risk of her being seen leaving in the morning against the need to feel her here in his arms, in his bed.

His Vulcan calculation poised against his human desire.

 _No more talking tonight_ , he thinks, drawing her closer.

Not tonight.

Not tonight.

**A/N: Chris and Spock's watery misadventures are told in Chapter 7 of "What We Think We Know." _Mailman_ is the word Spock and his cousins use to describe touch telepathy.**


	9. The Blonde Down the Hall

**Disclaimer: I play here only. Nothing profitable happens.**

When Nyota opens her eyes, for a moment she is disoriented. Instead of the bright yellow clock that usually wakes her, she sees a palm-sized PADD and the book of Vulcan poetry leaning against the base of the bedside lamp. _Spock's bedroom_. She's slightly chilled—which is odd, considering how warm Spock keeps his apartment. Running her hand over the sheets beside her, she notes that they are cool to her touch. The silence in the rest of the apartment tells her why.

He's gone.

Light leaks in around the edges of the window shade—morning, then, though not late. She glances around in vain for a clock, but even as she does, she realizes how futile that is. Spock has no need for one.

Across the room on his dresser is her comm and she throws off the duvet with some irritation, hops on the cold floor, and scoops it up to glance at the time. 0545. Her only class on Fridays doesn't begin until 0930, so she has plenty of time to shower and find something for breakfast.

 _Where is he?_ At his office, probably. No matter how early she goes to work at the lab, Spock is often already in the language building. Still, she's more than a little surprised that he left without waking her or saying anything to her.

No, if she's honest, she's more surprised—and more than a little hurt—that he left at all. Last night is the first time she has stayed over. A foolish risk, of course, though she wasn't about to leave him alone after the disastrous dinner with his cousins.

And now he's gone, as if nothing extraordinary has happened, as if today is simply another day.

A vague uneasiness brings heat to her face. This sense of her disappointment—of the distance between what a human lover would do and what Spock has chosen this morning—reminds her of Rachel's unspoken declaration of his _otherness._

Her uniform is folded on the top of the dresser, her underwear tucked neatly beside it; Spock's touch, not hers. Despite herself she grins a little, thinking of her haste in stepping out of them the evening before.

Now she slips back into them. If she hurries she will be back in her own room before too many people are up and out. A bagel from the cafeteria, and then a shower and a change of clothes—her imagination falters when she thinks about what she will tell Gaila.

_I fell asleep in the library?_

_An old friend came into town and we went clubbing?_

Both are equally implausible.

The odds are high that Gaila was up so late that she is now sound asleep and will not wake until long after Nyota has left their room again. Or else Gaila herself didn't make it back last night—something that happens more frequently now that Nyota made her promise to stop letting men stay over.

Planning ahead for every contingency is Nyota's nature. The idea of going back to the dorm with such a vague notion of what she will do and say makes her so uneasy that she is almost to the door before she sees the saucer and teacup sitting on the side table in the living area.

If Spock weren't so compulsively neat she might not have noticed them at all. As it is, they jump out from the landscape of the room like a splash of color in a black and white holo.

He's left them here for her, that's clear. A tea infuser sits in the otherwise empty cup, and when she lifts it, she smells the Kenyan tea he keeps on hand for her. Half of a toasted bagel and some fresh strawberries are on the saucer. An unnecessary fork is tucked among them, another reminder of Spock's Vulcan sensibilities.

_Is it wrong to take note of their differences?_

She detours to the kitchen and sees that the kettle is already plugged in, the water still hot enough to make tea.

All her earlier irritation evaporates at once.

Unplugging the kettle, she goes back into the living area and settles on the sofa, pouring water into the teacup and picking up a strawberry. Even in the few minutes since she awoke, the sun has risen enough to make the day much brighter. In the distance she hears a door slam—Professor Carter, perhaps, or another neighbor.

And then she hears Spock at the door, his key card rustling in the reader. Instantly she leaps up and rushes over, tugging on the knob. He must have gone out to the market, or he might have come back home to get something he left behind. Or he may have dropped something off at his office and is returning to be with her this morning—since they spend their Fridays apart, she in class and then with her study group in the afternoon, he manning the lab alone after teaching a computer class.

"Did you—" she says as she pulls the door open.

There is the blonde neighbor from down the hall, a woman Nyota has seen several times but has never spoken to.

"She seems to have an inordinate number of computer problems that require my assistance, _"_ Spock had commented drily once when he pointed her out across the commons.

At the time Nyota had laughed—surely Spock was joking—but now she reconsiders.

"Oh!" they both say at the same time.

The blonde neighbor has a paper envelope in one hand and a satchel in the other. She's dressed professionally, in a neat brown skirt and light-colored sweater, her straight blonde hair swept back with some sort of hair ornament.

Clipped to the collar of her sweater is an Academy civilian ID.

 _A researcher, or an office worker, or one of the lawyers on the staff_ —all this runs through Nyota's mind as she stands astonished at the door.

"Is—Spock here?"

The blonde woman's eyes travel to Nyota's unshod feet.

"He's—no, I'm not sure—can I take a message for you?"

Frantically Nyota casts about for what to say. Or should she say anything?

_I just brought the Commander some paperwork he needs?_

She imagines how she would sound saying this, the rising inflection at the end of the sentence giving her away.

Better to offer no explanation.

At least she has her uniform on—or most of it.

For a long moment the woman in the hall stares at her, and then with a little shake, she says, "Hi, I'm Andrea. You must be the assistant."

Something in the blonde woman's tone is off—more sinister than her words would indicate.

Or else I'm being paranoid, Nyota thinks.

"Yes," she says quickly, looking down at the envelope in Andrea's hand. "Would you like to leave a message?"

Again Nyota has the impression that Andrea is sizing her up and coming to some decision.

"Well, thank you," she says. "But actually, I was hoping that I left something here the other night. I can't find it anywhere."

 _The other night?_ Nyota tries to recall Spock mentioning a visit from his neighbor. Before she can respond, Andrea presses forward.

"Do you mind if I look around? It's about this big," she says, making a circle with her thumb and forefinger.

"Perhaps you should wait until the Commander is home," Nyota says as Andrea starts to step into the room.

"Oh!" Andrea says. "Well, I wouldn't ask, except that it's my office keycard. I've already lost one this month and I hate to admit I've lost a second one. I work in finance and they are pretty strict about security. Maybe Spock found it and has it waiting for me?"

"He didn't mention anything," Nyota says, blocking Andrea's entrance into the apartment. In a dim recess of her mind she is surprised at herself—at her antipathy toward this woman. Something about Andrea is _wrong._

On the other hand, she might simply be feeling a foolish jealousy. If Andrea's keycard is here, she probably does need it back. Maybe she's just a scatter-brained person who really does require lots of help unsnarling computer snafus and not someone more conniving….

"Look," Andrea says, putting her satchel on the ground beside her, "do you mind having a quick look around for me, if you don't want me to come in? It's a gold card about this big—has a picture on it, and my name, too. I'm always dropping things like that—"

The longer they stand here in the doorway arguing, the more likely it is that someone else will walk by and see her in Spock's apartment.

"It might," Nyota says, stepping back, "be easier for you to look."

Quickly she closes the door behind them and turns to follow Andrea.

"I don't see it in here," Andrea says.

 _That was quick_. Nyota starts back toward the door but Andrea swivels and heads down the hall instead.

"If it's anywhere it's probably in the bedroom," Andrea says, darting a look at Nyota.

Andrea palms the light on and stands for a moment, her eyes taking in the unmade bed. Then she walks around to the other side of the room and drops to her knees.

"It could have fallen out of my purse," she says, "or my pocket. Let's see—"

When she was 12 years old, Nyota had endured one summer of sewing lessons, her mother's idea of giving her some encouragement in the domestic arts. The teacher was a gifted seamstress who was well-regarded among the fashion elite for her creative designs and careful craftsmanship, someone who enjoyed passing her skills on to young people.

Each summer she and several of her assistants ran a workshop for 40 children, teaching them the principles of clothing design and construction—almost as a combined history and art lesson—and Nyota proved to be an apt pupil.

She particularly enjoyed sketching an original outfit and planning its execution. The actual sewing, by contrast, was not so much fun. However, the teacher kept her pupils interested by setting up a juried competition. The student with the best project would win something—what it was Nyota can no longer recall. What she does remember is what happened next.

On the day of the competition all 40 students wore their creations and spoke to the panel of invited judges about how they developed their ideas. Nyota had made a simple shift of deep green slubbed silk. The lines were lean and the dress was both comfortable and fancy—and it fit her in such an organic way that made her feel flattered and pretty. Even if she never sewed anything else, she was proud of what she had made and glad to understand the geometry behind it.

When her name was called out as one of the five finalists, Nyota was as much surprised as pleased.

"You'll probably win," one of the other finalists said as they waited for the judges to call them back for a second appraisal. Before Nyota knew what was happening, the other girl leaned forward, took the hem of the dress in her hand, and pulled so hard that the stitching came loose and the cloth ripped.

Nyota was flabbergasted. _An accident?_ Just then the judges called her and she was forced to explain why her dress had a tattered edge. Even to her own ear it sounded like a lie.

_A girl came up to me and did this._

"Here it is!" Andrea says, an unmistakable note of triumph in her voice as she stands up near the bed, waving the keycard in the air. "I thought I might have left it here…the other night."

Nyota struggles to keep her face neutral.

Following Andrea back to the front door, she vacillates between anger and pity.

_A girl came up to me and did this._

Computer problems that require Spock's assistance. The miraculous "recovery" of the key card in his bedroom. What kind of person would be so manipulative, so transparently deceptive?

And worse, Andrea finding her here this early, her boots off, having a morning cup of tea. Ammunition for someone unstable?

Her heart sinks.

"Did you want to leave a message?" Nyota says at the door, pointing to the envelope that Andrea is still clutching.

"This?" she says. "I'll give it to him later. When I see him."

And with that Andrea picks up her satchel and walks back into the hall.

Stunned, Nyota stands at the door for a minute, trying to decide what to do. She considers calling Spock on his comm—but he might be overheard if he is with someone. Better to give him the heads up about what just happened in person.

With that, she slips on her boots and tugs open the front door.

X X X X X X X

She met Montgomery Scott because of football.

Not the silly kind many North Americans play, but soccer—the real deal.

Andrea Olson and her brother Greg pull for Manchester and England, of course. Not surprisingly, Scotty follows Scotland—and when they aren't competing with England, admits a grudging admiration for the Manchester team.

The sports bar nearest the west gate of the Academy is always packed on game days, and though Andrea isn't the full-bore fan her brother is, she doesn't mind sipping a beer or two and chatting up the cadets and officers who prefer watching the game with a community of believers.

For that's what it is. Believers. Football as a religious experience.

Greg and Scotty's football rivalry is almost as intense as their Academy competition—or at least it seems so to Andrea. A year younger than Greg, she had followed him to the Academy but dropped out after a semester—not _washed_ out, as her less charitable relatives said. She hadn't needed the entire semester to realize that women weren't getting a fair shake there. If her brother was zooming to the top of the engineering classes, that just proved what she had been saying all along.

When Scotty beat out Greg for the junior departmental engineering prize, Andrea was neither surprised nor sympathetic.

"Don't whine to me about it," she told her brother. "You already get more breaks than I ever did."

Once, she and Scotty had ridden home on the same shuttle for a long weekend break, and she had been impressed with his courtliness. Most engineers she knew were so deep in their journals that they rarely came up for air, and conversations with them could be dull and technical.

Scotty, on the other hand, was interested in her, asking questions about the little town in Lancashire where her family still lived and sharing funny stories about his bar-hopping days in Aberdeen. When they landed at the transport relay station near Linlithgow, Andrea felt oddly disappointed that Scotty didn't ask to see her over the weekend. Back in San Francisco she made a point of running into him during football broadcasts.

Her job as a financial auditor for Starfleet isn't particularly taxing and she is free to socialize with the cadets at the Academy. The job itself isn't her career goal but a position her uncle, Admiral Slater, helped her get. She isn't ashamed of that—Starfleet owes her that much, after the prejudice she faced at the Academy.

She isn't ashamed of her connection to the brass, either. Why should she be? Everyone does what they have to do to get ahead. Everyone. She's no naïve fool.

That shuttle ride from San Francisco to the United Kingdom turned out to be the longest conversation Andrea would share with Scotty. He was friendly enough when she saw him—polite and pleasant—but beyond their interest in football and meeting up at the sports bar, the relationship foundered.

His fault, not hers. If she blamed herself at all it was for expecting more from a geeky engineer than she should have. Other than a stumbling kiss once when he walked her home, both of them tipsy after Manchester rolled over their opponent in a satisfying rout, they had been completely hands off—though Andrea was sure that Scotty would have been agreeable if she could have gotten him off somewhere in private.

Not that she didn't try. His schedule, unfortunately, was always slammed.

Water under the bridge, especially after he was shipped off to that backwater research station on Delta Vega.

"Too bad about Scotty," Greg said when she heard the news. "Now you can stop mooning over him like some lovesick puppy."

Her brother didn't sound regretful at all. In fact, he sounded smug and secretive.

"What do you know about this?" she asked, and Greg shrugged.

"About the missing beagle?"

"About anything," Andrea said. "Did you do something?"

Greg reached across the cafeteria table where they were sharing afternoon tea and squeezed her wrist.

"Let's just say," he said, squinting his eyes, "that if our friend Scotty had been more careful about double checking his calculations, he would still be here now, probably mad that I'm the front runner for the senior engineering prize and first in line for the _Enterprise_."

"You did something."

But Greg just grinned and finished his tea with a flourish.

_Everyone does what they have to do to get ahead. Everyone._

There's no use moralizing about it. It's just the way the world works.

Which is why Andrea finagles an invitation to one of the _Enterprise_ pre-launch receptions Starfleet is hosting for the public. Her uncle will be there, and other bigwigs, too: The newly named captain—Pike—and Greg, still floating from his appointment as chief engineer.

And Spock, if he accepts her invitation.

Andrea slips the engraved card into an envelope with a short note— _I have two tickets to the reception. Care to join me?_

He will, she's fairly certain. Once when she mentioned the _Enterprise_ to him he looked interested—or as interested as someone can while disassembling a computer and searching for a component that has strangely gone missing.

A ploy—she admits it. But how else can she get that laser-focused Vulcan to look her way?

When she moved into the faculty housing several months ago, she noticed Spock immediately. Often they ended up coming or leaving at the same time and he nodded to her curtly, somewhat aloof, rarely saying more than a word or two.

A challenge.

Greg has never had a class with him, which isn't that surprising. Most of Greg's coursework was done in the engineering department, though he has taken a couple of advanced computing interface programming classes which involved the computer science faculty.

"Break this for me," Andrea asked her brother one morning when she found him hunkered over a cup of coffee near the wall holovid in the cafeteria. She slid her notebook computer across the table.

"Are you daft?"

"Not permanently," Andrea said. "Just…gum up the works a bit. Not in an obvious way, but so someone has to hunt to find out what's wrong."

She knew how crazy that sounded. Greg sat up and said, "And I'm doing this why?"

"Never you mind. If it works I'll tell you then."

But it hadn't worked, at least not the way she had imagined it would. When she waylaid Spock after work that evening and asked him to check the computer, he took it apart on her kitchen table, checked the pieces with a handheld scanner, and snapped the whole thing back together in less than ten minutes.

While saying less than ten words.

The second time she broke the computer herself.

"The optical reader chip is missing," Spock said almost as soon as he had the back off the unit.

"How could that happen?" Andrea asked, trying to feign genuine surprise, and Spock said, "Unknown. You will need to replace it before repairs can be effected."

He refused her offer of tea and exited quickly—and she began to think that she might be wasting her time.

After all, Vulcans were known for their lack of feelings—something Andrea had doubted but was beginning to rethink. Was it possible that all of the stories about them were true, that they were so logical—so driven by practical concerns—that nothing else moved them?

That they were dully monogamous for life, like certain types of prairie voles, and predictably dreary in their interests—science and math, math and science…and nothing else?

But oh so sexy!

Handsome people, really. At the last Federation Assembly gathering Andrea had met the Vulcan contingent—the Ambassador and his party cool and distant but striking, too. She had almost given up the idea of garnering Spock's attention until then—and her discovery that he is the Ambassador's son.

Surely his appointment as an instructor at the Academy is a temporary sideshow. Either he is on his way up in the service—a captain someday?—or headed to the diplomatic corps.

Why not say it? She could be on her way up, too—if she plays her cards right.

The most she can look forward to if she stays in the finance department is replacing her supervisor in a few years—a stuffy clone of the professors she had trouble with at the Academy, men—and women, too—who couldn't see her talents for what they were: exceptional, a cut above the other recruits.

Getting that kind of notice takes planning. It may also take a strategic alliance with someone like an Ambassador's son.

_She's no naïve fool._

The assistant might be a problem.

The first time Andrea noticed her was at the recent Federation assembly in the great hall. When she wasn't working closely with the Andorians, the assistant had been doing something with the Vulcans…and Andrea had been watching at the moment that Spock took her to his father, obviously introducing them. Although she had been fifty meters away Andrea could see the possessiveness in his stance.

Since then she's seen the assistant twice—most recently earlier in the week when the card reader jammed and that idiot janitor took twenty minutes to get it working again. When the assistant left later that evening with another cadet, Andrea had gone immediately to Spock's door and knocked.

The door opened so quickly that he must have been standing behind it. The light from the hallway cast an eerie shadow on his face and she almost lost her nerve.

"I apologize for bothering you this late," Andrea said, "but I've been meaning to thank you for that software patch. Everything seems to be working fine now."

Spock said nothing but stood in the open doorway. Andrea felt her mouth go dry.

"So," she said, "I wanted to express my appreciation in some way. I'm a pretty good cook. Would you care to have dinner one evening? Or will you let me take you out for a coffee?"

Angling her head to the side to try to catch his expression, she pulled her sweater around her shoulders and shivered slightly.

"That is not necessary," Spock said at last, and Andrea shifted her position so that she was a few inches closer. "If you will excuse me, I am expecting a subspace call."

And with that, the door shut.

So she finds herself earlier than she usually rises, folding the invitation to the _Enterprise_ pre-launch shindig so that it will fit in the quaint letterbox slot to the left of the doorknob of Spock's apartment, when the door opens suddenly.

The assistant.

Rumpled, definitely—barefooted, astonishment on her face.

"Oh! Is—Spock here?"

Certain that Spock must be there, Andrea is momentarily at a loss to know what to say when the assistant says he isn't.

If he isn't here now—at 6:30 in the morning—then was he here last night? Is the assistant apartment sitting for him?

Not likely. The assistant is here this early because she spent the night. Whether or not Spock is here at this minute, the assistant wouldn't have spent the night if it didn't mean something.

Is it possible that Spock is taking that kind of risk?

Not just possible, but probable.

 _What does that say about what we think we know about Vulcans?_ Vulcan prudery, indeed.

The assistant is a problem—not because she stands in Andrea's way, but because she could get Spock kicked out of Starfleet for what they are doing. No ride up. No diplomatic corps.

_Everyone does what they have to do to get ahead._

"Hi, I'm Andrea. You must be the assistant."

The implied intimacy of a first name only. With another word she negates the other woman's uniqueness, reduces her to a function. The _assistant._

"Yes," the assistant says. "Would you like to leave a message?"

Leaving a message turns over control, and Andrea feels herself on the cusp of forward motion. Time to take action.

"Well, thank you," she says. "But actually, I was hoping that I left something here the other night. I can't find it anywhere. Do you mind if I look around? It's about this big."

She steps onto the doorsill and slips her hand in her pocket. She fingers a few objects there—a tube of lip balm, a folded tissue. Neither will do. Something slick and flat slides under her fingertip. Her office keycard.

"Perhaps you should wait until the Commander is home."

_This may be harder than she thought._

"Oh!" Andrea says. "Well, I wouldn't ask, except that it's my office keycard. I've already lost one this month and I hate to admit I've lost a second one. I work in finance and they are pretty strict about security. Maybe Spock found it and has it waiting for me?"

"He didn't mention anything," the assistant says, frowning. Andrea notes her eyes darting past her shoulder into the hall. _She doesn't want a scene. Someone will notice._

Ah, the rules. So she _is_ breaking rules. She and Spock.

"Look," Andrea says, putting her satchel on the ground beside her, "do you mind having a quick look around for me, if you don't want me to come in? It's a gold card about this big—has a picture on it, and my name, too. I'm always dropping things like that—"

As she expects, the assistant relents and lets her in, shutting the door hastily behind them.

"I don't see it in here," Andrea says. As Andrea surmised, Spock's apartment is like her own, with a kitchen to the left, a small living area immediately inside the door, and a hallway to the right leading to another room.

"If it's anywhere it's probably in the bedroom," Andrea says, heading down the hall. Behind her she hears the assistant following.

The unmade bed is surprisingly startling.

"It could have fallen out of my purse," Andrea says, "or my pocket. Let's see—"

Kneeling behind the bed, she flicks the keycard from her pocket and holds it up.

"Here it is! I thought I might have left it here…" she says, eyeing the assistant carefully, "the other night."

Enough doubt to make a difference? She doesn't want to resort to alerting the authorities—not unless she has to. That could backfire, getting Spock in serious trouble.

But helping this young cadet decide to leave on her own….

"Did you want to leave a message?" the assistant says at the door, pointing to the envelope that Andrea is still holding.

"This?" she says. "I'll give it to him later. When I see him."

As she turns to leave she takes note of the distress in the assistant's face. A shame to have to do it this way—she doesn't relish causing anyone pain.

On the other hand, she does what she has to do. No use to pass judgment for doing what is necessary.

X X X X X X X

They almost don't make it to the bedroom.

His key card in one hand, a small market bag in the other, Spock is just about to swipe his card for entry when Nyota swings open the door.

She starts visibly.

"I thought you were gone!" she says, and he tilts his head.

"I was," he says, and she steps back as he enters.

"I mean," she says, looking at the bag in his hand, "I thought you were gone for the day. To the office or something."

She swings the door shut behind him and he realizes that she had been on her way out, her boots zipped, her uniform smoothed down as much as it can be, her hair pulled up in a ponytail, the loose tendrils suggesting her haste.

For less than a second he feels a flash of panic.

She can't leave now, not when all he has been doing for the past 37 minutes is thinking about getting her into bed.

"I had no milk for your tea," he says, hefting the market bag, "nor yogurt for the fruit. It required a trip to the store."

For most of the night he had cat napped, waking to watch Nyota sleeping beside him, marveling at what her physical presence makes him _feel._

His contentment may be the most surprising—how restful he feels when they are together, how at home.

The pleasure in their conversations, and the expanded vision of seeing the world through her eyes. As soon as he believes he can predict how she will respond, she does or says something he could not foresee—the novelty of her mind never tiring him.

His feeling of possessiveness, worrying him—she shies away when she glimpses it in the dark recesses of his thoughts.

And the persistent, grinding undercurrent of sexual arousal is new…and disturbing, for he knows his thinking is clouded by it.

More than once in the past two months he has wondered if he were beginning to slip into _pon farr_ , has even considered confiding in his father, but the gnawing desire he feels for Nyota has ample description in human love poetry—and in the ancient poetry of pre-Surak Vulcan as well.

_I am drawn to you against my will. I ravish you in my dreams._

Just so.

Since he and Nyota have become sexually intimate, the need to feel her cool fingers on his fevered brow has only gotten more intense. When they are apart his mind drifts to fantasies of smoothing back her collar and exposing the tender skin of her throat or pressing one hand to her cheek while his other hand pulls her so hard to him that he feels her feet lift briefly from the floor.

When they are together he acts on those fantasies.

Perhaps this combination of his appreciation for her intellect and her sexuality is what drives him to make unwise choices now—choices like asking her to stay the night.

Conceivably they could retreat back across that line that Starfleet has established, going back to what they were before—professor and student, or perhaps friends or colleagues some day. He tries to imagine how that would be—spending time working side by side in the lab, say, with no expectation of anything more than a cordial goodbye at the end of the day.

Or if they should both end up on a starship together—and here he represses another pang of regret at the botched interview with Captain Pike—they would share an occasional cup of tea in the mess or stop for a chat in the recreation hall. They would be professionals with a shared past but deliberately separate futures.

The thought makes him almost dizzy with despair.

They could go back, except that he cannot imagine doing so, not now, not when he dedicates a fraction of every waking moment considering her safety and well-being, when every dull tick of the clock as he stands in front of a classroom, waiting for a student to finally, finally stumble onto the answer of a question he has asked, is filled with drifty, imagined interactions with her, when he falls asleep longing for her and wakes up so miserable with desire that he castigates himself for his lack of control.

If he had walked away when he first felt himself falling, if he had resisted the pull to her and kept his distance, it might be possible to go forward without needing _all_ of her, without considering her own wishes in his calculations about the future.

If he had never heard her cry out during their lovemaking, had never felt her fingers twining in his hair or her teeth nipping his shoulder, he might be able to imagine a life without such intimacies.

But he cannot imagine such a life now. It is like someone with sight trying to imagine the world of the blind.

He starts to the kitchen to put away his purchases but stops and turns directly to her. Her expression is so troubled that even he can see it.

"Your neighbor," she says, "came by. She…knows I was here."

"My neighbor?"

"The woman down the hall. Andrea. She said she left her keycard here the other night and she came in looking for it."

He hears Nyota's words but they make no logical sense. Why would his neighbor make such a claim? Could she be mistaken? Or deceitful?

If mistaken, then her memory and thought processes are seriously compromised. If deceitful—

He glances up and sees Nyota eyeing him closely.

"She lied," he says, and Nyota nods.

"I know. She wanted me to think she had been here. She even pretended to find her keycard in your bedroom."

The uneasiness he feels flares into alarm.

"Her actions are illogical—"

"Or very calculating," Nyota says. "I'm worried about what she might say to someone."

The woman down the hall—Andrea Olson—has been something of a nuisance with her repeated requests for help. After the third time that she approached him for help with her computer, he had accessed Starfleet records and found her in the Academy archives. Before withdrawing as a cadet she had filed a complaint of sexism that had been investigated and dismissed. A footnote from her PT instructor said that she did not accept criticism well. A professor testified at her discharge that she showed signs of "excessive narcissism."

She must have come for help this morning and found Nyota here—unfortunate, but not definitive proof of anything untoward.

But why would she say she had been inside? And why pretend to have left her keycard here? It is completely baffling.

"Don't you see?" Nyota says, following him to the kitchen. "She wants me to think you are intimate with each other."

"We are not. I hardly know her."

"I know, but she is sending me a message to back off. That she…was here first. Or is here now."

"She has never been here at all."

He sees Nyota react—a shake of her head, a motion with her hand, and he realizes that she is speaking metaphorically.

But literally this is true as well, that Andrea has never been to his apartment until this morning while he was out getting the milk. If the market deli across the street had stocked sufficient dairy products, he would have been back in time to deal with this on his own. He feels a prickle of irritation at the market manager, Arun.

"The _use by_ date for this milk is today," Spock had said, holding up the last carton in the cooler at the market. "And this yogurt has expired."

Arun had darkened and bobbed uneasily.

"So sorry, Commander," he said, "but the shipment didn't come in as I had expected. It should be here later today."

"Later today will not serve my purposes," Spock said, replacing the milk and walking out of the market. The next closest food mart was a ten-minute walk south at a quick pace. When he left the apartment Nyota was asleep. He weighed the odds that she would wake before his return against the likelihood that she would be happier with milk for her morning tea. The food mart, then.

The milk at the larger food mart was fresher and he felt an inordinate pleasure as he carried it back toward the apartment. As the sun rose he imagined Nyota drowsy in bed, nude beneath the sheets, her hair splayed out behind her, her hand tracing lazy circles on his chest before trailing lower—

By the time he slid his keycard into his door reader, he was almost panting.

Did human males have this much trouble with control?

Nyota's expression at the door gave him pause—and then the unwelcome and confusing news about the neighbor.

"If her intention is to—as you say—send you a message, then she has seriously misjudged you," Spock says, turning around from the cooler where he stores the milk and yogurt.

"You aren't taking this seriously!"

"On the contrary," he says, reaching for her. "I am concerned that she is an unbalanced person who may do something even more irrational."

In the weak morning light that filters through the window blinds, the individual filaments of Nyota's hair have the same refraction as a rainbow, with visible deep blues and purples, and even, Spock notes, touches of red and silver.

Fascinating.

"What are we going to do?"

He leans his head down to her neck and breathes deeply. Soap and musk and salt and even a whiff of semen and strawberries—an olfactory record of her activities in the past few hours.

"Are you listening?"

"Not with optimal efficiency," he says, running his hands down her back while snugging her up closer.

"We have to figure out what to do," she says, trying to lean away. Her resistance is strangely exciting and he feels his heart beat faster.

"We know what to do," he says, nuzzling her neck again.

"What if this woman talks? What will we do then?"

As if from a distance he finally hears her. He stands up straighter and tips his head until he is looking her in the eye.

"Nyota," he says, almost with impatience, "no matter what Andrea Olson says, she will not be believed. She is deceptive and unbalanced. She can prove nothing."

"But she could start rumors," Nyota says, her face still pinched. "She could get people talking."

That's true. Spock knows how damning rumors can be. Just last month an engineering professor resigned rather than face disciplinary action over breaking the fraternization regulations. In his case the student he was involved with had told one of her friends about the affair and the news had spread from there.

"Then we will have to be more careful," he says, and Nyota gives a small nod and leans forward until her arms are tucked up on his chest. The wave of protectiveness he feels overwhelms him—and with it a sexual urgency that makes him feel like he might fly apart.

Almost against his conscious will his hand snakes to her face and his fingertip brushes her brow—and with it, his mind offers her an invitation. _Now?_

He senses her anxiety beginning to ebb away, her own arousal beginning.

 _Now_ , she answers, and the rest of the morning is a blur.

**A/N: I've always thought that evil people don't think of themselves as evil—that somehow they justify to themselves what they do.**

**But I could be wrong...**

**Thanks for the kudos and comments!  They keep it fun!  
**


	10. Gone Fishin'

**Disclaimer: Do not own, do not profit. Wish I did on both accounts!  
**

"If your nose gets any lower, you'll be breathing your breakfast."

When he wants to, Leonard McCoy can make his voice as silky as a Georgia peach. Nyota grins and lifts her chin from her hand and slides her elbow from the cafeteria table where she has been slumped over a cooling bowl of lumpy oatmeal.

"What are you doing in this neck of the woods?" she asks with an exaggerated drawl. He laughs at her gentle mockery.

"Some people are actually happy to see me," McCoy says. "They invite me to be a guest lecturer, for instance. Or they take me out for a drink after work. Or they let me win at cards once in awhile."

Nyota gives him a jaundiced look.

"They let you win?"

"The ones who love me do."

"As I recall, the last time I saw you playing poker, you were losing. Badly."

"Exactly," McCoy says, sliding into the chair next to Nyota. "You weren't being very friendly that night, letting me lose that way. And you haven't been back since! Where have you been? Not playing cards, that's for sure."

"Working," Nyota says, tipping the last of her juice glass up and draining it.

"Everybody works," McCoy says. "You are doing something else, too, that's taking all your free time."

She shivers as she sets her glass down on her tray. _A joke? A guess?_

"What do you mean?"

"I mean," McCoy says, leaning a fraction closer, "there's not a cadet here who isn't busting ass. But they manage to find time to party occasionally. I never see you out at all. What happened to that spunky cadet who whooped me silly in Professor Aiker's military history class every week and then took all my poker money on the weekends?"

Nyota traces her finger on the tray and takes a breath.

"I told you," she says, "I'm busy. Advanced xenolinguistics isn't the cakewalk military history was—"

"Huh!"

"—and I'm doing an internship this year that's taking a lot of time."

"Yeah," McCoy says, "with that Andorian professor."

"What? No, with Commander Spock. He's Vulcan, not Andorian."

She sees McCoy's gaze become unfocused, as if he is trying to remember something.

"A Vulcan? You sure?"

"You're crazy!" Nyota says fondly. _He doesn't know anything after all._

"Could be," he says, grinning. "But you're the one practically sleeping in your oatmeal. You look tired to me. Sure you aren't coming down with something? That weird flu you had before, maybe? Could be a relapse."

"I'm fine," she says, putting her hand on his arm and giving a squeeze. "I told you, I'm just busy."

"Well," McCoy says, sitting up and waving to someone in the morning crowd milling about inside the cafeteria, "mystery solved then. If you are working for a Vulcan, then of course you don't have any time to spare. I've only met a few in my rotations but they were all impossible to work with. Persnickety and controlling to a fault…Okay, I gotta run."

He stands and looks down at Nyota. "But don't stay away so long. The poker buddies have been asking about you. Tell that Vulcan of yours to lighten up. Starfleet doesn't condone slavery."

And with that he is gone. Nyota lets her spoon drop back into her bowl and waits for her heart to slow down. McCoy had scared her there for a moment with his insinuations about her free time.

Although if the truth is known, she's had more free time this past week than she would have liked, even with the extra duty of helping Professor Carter and Janna prepare their presentation for the Feynman Conference.

Twice she has met with them at Professor Carter's apartment, helping set up language samples for the experimental scanner. Janna has done the bulk of the work, but Nyota's contribution is valuable.

And _valued._ Professor Carter thanks her for her work every time she sees her. And Janna, too, in her own way, seems to enjoy Nyota's company. It is nice—and different—to get so much praise.

Both times that she worked at Professor Carter's place, Nyota had expected Spock to show up, or at least to leave her an invitation to stop at his apartment before heading back to the dorm. But he hadn't. Later she commented on it, telling him she was sorry he wasn't at home when she was working so close.

"I was home," he said, "but I was occupied."

From anyone else, the words would have been hurtful or inconsiderate. From Spock, they were simple facts.

 _Occupied with what?_ she wanted to ask. Since the morning Andrea had seen her at his apartment, Spock has been…not distant, exactly, but more contained, more reserved. She knows they have to be careful—that if Andrea has said anything to anyone, the brass will get wind of it soon enough.

But her schedule this week included almost no time when she and Spock were working together. When she was running the lab, he was in conference with his computer science students in the computer building. While she worked in his office, he upgraded the lab stations.

And so on. At first she thought it was an odd coincidence. By Thursday she knew it was deliberate.

Finally she asked him about it when she made tea and took him a cup while he read computer messages at his desk. Looking up when she put the cup beside him, Spock raised his eyebrow as she stepped to the door and shut it.

"Are you upset with me about anything?" she said without preamble. She knew him well enough to recognize the importance of the sudden widening of his eyes and the flush at the tips of his ears. He was surprised.

"Negative," he said. "Why would you assume—"

"You've been…hard to reach. I've hardly seen you since…you know."

"I am being cautious."

She stood by his desk and looked at him sitting stiffly in his chair, his hands folded in front of him, his eyes on hers. Anyone looking at them would think they barely knew each other, so blank was his expression, so awkward was her stance.

"I know we need to be careful," she said, suddenly very tired, looking down at her hands. In her own ears her voice sounded petulant and self-absorbed. "It's just that I…miss you."

At that she had looked into his face and was shocked at what she saw—not the blankness of a moment ago but sorrow and longing so palpable that she felt her hand lifting to him of its own accord.

"Nyota," he said quietly, and that one word—the sounding of her name—was enough to reassure her that this emotional desert was not his choice.

It made the rest of the morning more bearable. He left for an hour during their usual lunch time and then returned to work alone in his office.

She knows he is standing in the doorway of the lab even though her back is turned by the reaction of the students, shifting in their chairs and hazarding glances over their shoulders. When she looks up, sure enough he is there, startling her by beckoning her over.

"My mother's shuttle arrives in 24 minutes," he says, "so I am leaving for the transport station now."

"Your mother? She's coming here? Is she okay?"

As he speaks, Spock flicks his eyes from her to the students working in the lab and back again.

"Her regular radiation treatment," he says.

His voice is soft and measured—not just to keep their conversation private, but because he often adopts this tone when he talks about his mother. He rarely says much about his family at all, but his features brighten when he tells stories of working with his mother in her garden or recounts her admonitions to him and his father.

"Do you need anything?" Nyota asks, but Spock shakes his head and she feels a wave of disappointment.

"I can think of nothing. My mother's treatment is in the morning and then she will fly to Seattle to spend a few days with Aunt Cecilia."

Her heart in her throat, Nyota considers how to phrase her next question. Every word, every nuance, is fraught with the possibility of being misunderstood.

_Can I meet her?_

A simple request, really. _Can I meet your mother?_

And not so simple either. _Can I meet your mother?_ _Will you grant me entrance into this most intimate part of your life?_

She could try to sound humorous or amused— _your mother? Can I meet her? I'll bet she has funny stories to tell about you!_

Or formal, using a high Vulcan dialect, confounding any eavesdropping students sitting with their backs turned resolutely away.

Coming from anyone other than her, the question would be innocuous. From her, it is loaded with subtext, even when she tries to strip it down to a single layer of meaning.

"Can I meet her?"

Before he says a word, she knows his answer. His telltale glance to the side gives him away.

"Another time, perhaps," he says, and she nods. He's right. They do have to be careful or people will talk.

She accepts this.

But she doesn't have to like it.

"Of course, Commander," she says, turning back to the students who have been patiently waiting for what suddenly feels like forever.

X X X X X X X

As soon as Amanda sees him, she knows something is up. When she disembarks from the shuttle she senses where he is in the crowd and looks in his direction, catching a glimpse of his dark hair, his squared shoulders tipped back, his eyes seeking out hers.

 _Here I am, Mother_ , and she beams back her happiness.

Before she can make her way forward he is there in front of her, taking her small travel bag from her hand. They have this routine down pat—her regular trips for radiation therapy necessitated by living in the imperfect—at least, from a human point of view—light wavelengths of Vulcan. The treatment isn't pleasant but it isn't all that onerous either. A few hours of lying beneath a pulsating radiation lamp, and then a few days of exhaustion and queasiness. If nothing else, it gives her a chance to visit with Spock before heading to Seattle to catch up with her sister Cecilia.

As they ride a ground car to the Academy grounds and Spock's apartment, Amanda tries to sort out what is different. Some hesitation in his manner, some deflection when she bumps up against his mind.

"What are you up to?" she asks aloud but Spock merely raises an eyebrow.

"And don't pretend you don't know what I mean," she says, training her gaze on him.

Spock is prevented from having to answer by a lurch. The ground car stops suddenly—the automatic driving system beeping a warning too late to be much help to the passengers who are thrown forward. Amanda sees several cadets in their telltale red uniforms darting across the street in front of the car.

"Perhaps we should exit here," Spock says, unlatching the door.

"Warning," the automated voice intones. "Door open."

Spock steps outside and reaches back towards his mother to help her navigate the low opening. As she places her hand in his, she sends out a question through her touch. _Are you okay?_

"Why do you ask?" he says out loud. The sound of his voice is almost a rebuff. And that, she realizes, is what she is feeling—his deliberate distance, an evasion that sends an unmistakable signal: _My thoughts are my own._

"You always were the master of misdirection," she says. "A question is not an answer. I ask because your father said you have been ill—and you do look thin."

"You often think I look thin," Spock says, taking her by the elbow and leading her to the sidewalk. "And I was not ill for long."

"The soup helped?"

She hazards a glance at him. They both know what she is really asking _. The teaching assistant, the one who ended up eating the soup. What about her?_

The ground traffic is particularly noisy this afternoon, and a hover bus swishes to a stop at the corner, forcing them to detour around the crowd of people waiting to board. Amanda has the impression that Spock welcomes the diversion.

They don't speak again until they reach the east gate of the Academy. The faculty apartment building is just inside, and within a few minutes Spock is opening the door to his apartment and setting her travel bag on the sofa beside her.

As he moves to the kitchen to turn on the kettle, Amanda notes his silhouette, sunlight streaming around him like a corona. He _is_ thin—and he has dark smudges under his eyes. She starts to say so but hesitates.

If she asks outright, he will deny it—or get prickly with her.

She'll have to outlogic him into revealing anything.

A daunting task—but she hasn't lived for years on Vulcan without learning a few tricks.

For a few minutes as Spock busies himself in the kitchen, she leans back against the sofa and lets her eye rove around the living area. It looks as it always does—as his room back home on Vulcan always did when he was living there—spare and neat and organized. The only personal touches are several holos tucked among the shelving lined with PADDs and books.

"I need to send you some new pictures," Amanda calls. "I have a lovely one of this year's garden."

Spock says nothing but she doesn't expect him to. What is there, after all, to say? She will send the pictures and he will display them if he wishes. After so many years of conversations with Vulcans, Amanda appreciates the silences as much as the carefully chosen words. Human chatter, by contrast, is just that…too much noise.

When he returns with the tea, Amanda notices immediately that the mug is one she has never seen before, an oddly satisfying lumpy one with an almost gritty feel to the glaze. Spock holds another like it.

"These are new," she says and is startled to see him color. Why would that embarrass him? _A gift from someone?_ They are certainly handmade, decorative, not something she would expect him to buy. Almost everything else he owns is utilitarian to a fault.

She decides to go fishing.

"They remind me of a set I used to have," Amanda says, watching Spock over the rim of the mug as she takes a tentative sip. "Where did you get them?"

So sure is she that someone gave them to him that she is nonplussed when he says, "I bought them."

"You did!"

"A local potter made them."

This is new. Purchasing something from a potter—overlooking an ordinary replicated mug in favor of something with more aesthetic flair.

"I didn't realize you had such a deep appreciation for the arts," she says, smiling to let him see that she is not judging him.

"Vulcans generally do," Spock says, his voice level.

"Well, yes," Amanda says, putting the mug on the small table beside the sofa, " _Vulcans_ do. I just didn't realize that _you_ do."

Even though he tries to keep her gently walled out, she feels his understanding that he is being chaffed.

"And how fortunate," she adds, "that you had the foresight to buy _two_."

She meets his gaze then and is rewarded with a definite flush creeping up around his ears.

Trying to keep secrets from his mother, indeed.

A soft chiming from his pocket—Spock pulls out his comm and scrolls quickly through a message.

"Something you need to take care of?" Amanda asks when he places his comm back in his pocket.

"A note from Admiral Keening," Spock says, standing and picking up the now empty tea mugs from the table. "The lab tutorial my colleague and I instituted has been approved for a presentation at the Feynman Conference. The Admiral wants us to attend."

Suddenly he is all business, dispatching the mugs to the kitchen and pacing briskly around the room, gathering PADDs from the bookshelf into a pile on the loveseat, fetching a duffel from his bedroom down the hall, and stacking folded clothes beside it, all while dialing his comm.

Amanda sits back and watches in amusement, like someone in the eye of the storm.

"When do you have to leave?"

"Tomorrow," he says, and before she can reply he says into the comm, "A message from Spock. Please return my call as soon as convenient."

"My colleague," he says to his mother's unspoken question. "Dr. Artura. He had plans to attend a memorial service this weekend on Andoria. In light of the Admiral's request, he may wish to stay here instead."

"That seems unlikely," Amanda says, and Spock stops moving and peers at her intensely.

"Explain," he says, and Amanda shakes her head.

"I can't really," she says. "I mean, I don't know your colleague, but if he is Andorian, they take their memorial services very seriously. At least the Andorians your father and I have known over the years. Did this professor—"

"Artura."

"—Artura lose someone close to him?"

She sees Spock considering, his head tilted slightly to the side, his eyes briefly unfocused. He would not answer the way a human would, quickly, intuitively, but only after consulting his memory, flipping through his interactions with the Andorian professor like shuffling a stack of cards.

"If he has," Spock says at last, "he has not mentioned it to me."

"Then I may be wrong," Amanda says, shrugging.

But in fact, when the comm chimes soon afterward, she overhears Spock's conversation with the professor and surmises that his plans are immutable, that he is annoyed at being asked to consider changing them.

"If you do not mind a short walk," Spock says when he ends the call, "I need to get some files from my office. We can leave from there for dinner if you are hungry."

The walk across the campus is not as short as Spock made it sound—but Amanda uses the opportunity to rest her hand on his forearm as they walk. He doesn't, as he has in the past, pull away or stiffen at her touch, a change she noticed first when he visited on Vulcan several months ago.

That memory stirs up her anger and she struggles not to think about that visit—about T'Pring's refusal to communicate when Spock contacted her, about Sarek's employing a healer to sever their bond. That Spock seemed _relieved_ afterward does not mitigate Amanda's fury.

As if he senses her inner turmoil, Spock lets his arm drift down and Amanda drops her hand.

"Is your assistant working this evening?" she says as they start up the steps of the language building.

By the time she reaches the top of the steps, Spock is waiting with the door open.

"I'd like to meet her," Amanda says as she steps over the door sill, watching Spock from the corner of her eye. "That is, if you don't mind."

"She closed the lab and left before your arrival," he says, not meeting her gaze.

 _The master of misdirection_.

Amanda smiles to herself.

Spock pulls out a chair beside a small table against one wall in his office and motions for her to sit while he turns on the terminal at his desk and begins calling up files. Something about the table and the equipment on it catches Amanda's attention. The arrangement of the stacked PADDs, the way the monitor is tipped forward, the choice of styluses and markers lined in a row along one side are obvious indications that a mind other than her son's has set this up. The teaching assistant then. This is her work station.

Sitting here with her back to Spock, she wonders what he sees when he works at his desk, whether or not the assistant works here at the same time, what kind of a distraction she must be…or they must be to each other.

The way she herself and Sarek are unable to work in the same room when they are home together—the hum of their bond somehow louder when she can look up at any time and see him bent over a keyboard, puzzling through Federation reports or writing up his observations from a diplomatic mission.

Or working nearby when she is in the garden, rerouting the irrigation tubing or priming the reluctant pump. Even when her back is turned, a trowel in one hand, her fingers red with dust and soil, she knows when he is watching her.

Is that what Spock feels when he sits at his desk, his gaze trained on the computer monitor, his attention elsewhere?

She glances at him now, his head tilted to the left, a crease between his brows. More and more he looks like his father—not in build or even in coloring but in the intensity of his expression, the cant of his head when he concentrates.

She's seen only a few pictures of Sarek at this age. His parents had one that sat on a shelf in their living area for years, of Sarek two years older than Spock is now, stockier, his hair rucked up and coarser than his son's, with more gravity to his stance, more self-assurance.

And another one, of Sarek shortly before Spock's birth, and his father, Skon, standing stiffly beside each other. Skon already slightly stooped and white-haired, the telltale tremor in his hands an early sign of Bendii Syndrome, though no one voiced that aloud until later.

The last time she had seen him she had been shocked at how much he had deteriorated, how thin and bowed, his face drawn up so tightly his skin looked shiny and his breathing was raspy. Even so he had beckoned to her to stand beside him for a few moments and she had led Spock—three or four years old at the time—to his bedside, Sarek and his mother hovering close by to shield her from Skon's emotional projections.

The most insidious part of the disease—and the most ironic one—was the affected person's loss of emotional control. Not only did someone with Bendii lose his ability to keep his feelings private, he sent them onto others. As the disease progressed, friends fell away, unwilling to be buffeted by the storm of emotions. Even family members had been known to abandon a sufferer.

When Skon died at last, Sarek's mother didn't last long. Weakened by the loss of her bond and tired by the strain of caring for her ill husband, she died six months later.

Sarek's equanimity through it all sometimes confounded Amanda.

"You should visit your father more often," she had said early in the course of the disease before she understood how shaming it was to Skon to have them there. After his death she encouraged Sarek to spend more time with his mother but this he also resisted.

"If my mother wishes for my company," he said one evening as they cleared away the remnants of their meal, "she will let me know."

"But she's not doing well," Amanda had protested, and Sarek had nodded briefly.

"Indeed, she is not," he said, "but my presence will not alter anything."

Amanda had huffed at him and said, "You make it sound like you don't matter, like you can't do anything at all."

"Because I cannot," Sarek replied.

"She's grieving herself to death, Sarek. You might make her less lonely."

"Perhaps," he said, though she could tell that he was skeptical, that his comment was meant simply to reassure her that he was listening.

Was it then that Sarek had first broached the topic of genetic testing, or after his mother's death? She can't recall.

What she does recall is how she felt when he told her that he had scheduled testing for himself and his sons.

Like most people, she knew that Bendii Syndrome ran in families, sometimes appearing in successive generations and sometimes not. Caused by the mutation of a single gene, any child of an affected parent had a 50% risk of inheriting the disease.

Vaguely she had considered the possibility that Sarek might be affected—had considered it and dismissed it.

According to Sarek, Skon had shown symptoms years earlier—a marked sensitivity to sound and light, for instance, and a shambling gait that he passed off as tendon strain. Sarek had none of those symptoms, was, in fact, a picture of health.

She stated those reasons now.

"You can't have it," she said, certain, reaching out to touch his warm hand, his vibrantly alive, healthy hand.

But when she did, a wash of his concern flashed through her and she almost gasped.

"If I do," he said, "it will not concern you."

There it was, the unspoken truth that reared it head from time to time like a sleeping animal—the unassailable truth that Sarek would outlive her by many years. If he was struck down by Bendii—a disease of the elderly—she would have been long dead already.

From anyone else, the words would have been hurtful or inconsiderate. From Sarek they were simple facts.

There was no question that she wanted to know whether Spock or Sybok were also affected—though in reality if they were, they would not exhibit any signs for a century, maybe two. Such a time scale was unreal to her, and she comforted herself with the idea that scientists or healers might discover a cure by then.

"Yes," she said calmly when Sarek asked if she wanted him to read the results to her.

"Once you know," he said, "you cannot unknow. Consider well."

At that she paused. What if her son was fated by the hand of genetic chance to face a future of increasing physical weakness and emotional unmooring? Would she tell him? Would it change how she treated him now, still a very young child? Maybe not consciously, but in some way shifting for him differently, expecting less or giving more?

She had to know. She could not bear not to know something that important about Spock.

"Yes," she said again, surprised that Sarek was able to wall her out of his thoughts so easily—and disturbed by this, too, and determined to speak to him about it later.

"Spock does not carry the gene," he said, his eyes steady on her face.

Her relief washed over her like a tsunami and she pressed her palms together and raised them to her face like a supplicant.

"And Sybok?" she said when she trusted herself to speak.

"I have already spoken to him," Sarek said. "Naturally he is disappointed."

The weight of his words crashed into her and for a moment she couldn't catch her breath.

A young teenager—in many ways a haunted boy—and now he would be haunted by more than just the memories of his dead mother and the peripatetic life of moving back and forth between his father and his mother's relatives.

She loved him deeply, dearly, would adopt him as her own if Vulcan law would allow it—or rather, if his maternal grandmother would give up her rights to him.

With the fingers of her left hand she pressed her collarbone to try to ease the ache there. Poor Sybok, more open and affectionate than most Vulcan children. If she hadn't loved him for himself, she would have loved him for his tenderness with Spock.

Would this knowledge stifle him, make him more hesitant? Or the opposite, send him reeling and reckless and heedless against an unfair future?

"I am sorry, Amanda," Sarek said, and she lifted her gaze and met his own—the bond between them once more full and uncensored.

And then she knew.

Sarek had the gene, too.

"No!"

She thought she might faint but Sarek was there immediately in her mind, comforting her. _We will have many years_. _You need not cry._

He took her into his arms then and she wept until her head was throbbing.

"I'm not crying because you have this," she said when she could speak again, her words punctuated with hiccups and pauses. "I'm crying because I won't be there with you."

That must have been before Sarek's mother died, Amanda realizes as she sits at the little table in Spock's office. She remembers his decision not to tell his mother about his and Sybok's diagnosis—a choice not many Vulcans would have made with their unblinking devotion to the truth.

"It will add to her grief," he said, and Amanda had thought, _And once you know, you can't unknow._

Perhaps she needs to consider that now, as she pokes around for information about what Spock is up to these days. According to Sarek, Spock would be breaking Starfleet regulations if he is involved with his teaching assistant. Not that she thinks much of Starfleet regulations—too many of the brass she's known over the years are hidebound bureaucrats who have trouble seeing the forest for the trees.

 _If she knows something for certain_ —but she doesn't. Not at all. She's never been one to believe in anything like mother's intuition. If anything, Spock has often been able to dodge her so completely that when she heard stories of his actions from others—his chess teacher, for example, praising his skill, or the headmaster suggesting that Spock's scuff-up with that bully was completely justified—she felt that she was hearing about a stranger.

_My son? Beating the chess master at his own game?_

_My son? Beating the bully senseless?_

Soon enough Spock powers down his computer and gathers up some loose flimplasts and papers. Turning off the light, he shepherds her out into the hall and locks the door behind him. In the distance she hears an odd sound, a rhythmic, echoing shuffle in the stairwell.

Beside her she feels Spock react.

An electricity buzzes through their bond and she turns to stare at him.

He is looking straight ahead at the figure coming into view, a young woman climbing the stairs. For a moment he is nailed to the floor, his surprise and hesitation clear.

Suddenly she feels his hand on her elbow—not quite steadying himself but almost. He begins piloting her down the hall.

The young woman is striking, even in the imperfect light of the shadowed hallway. Dark and as lithe as a dancer when she walks forward, her long hair pulled up and back, swaying behind her. The expression on her face is tentative, anxious, hopeful—all at once.

"Cadet Uhura," Spock says, "I didn't expect to see you here."

"Yes, I—" the cadet stammers, "I have some research I need to do for a paper—and I wanted to get these last assignments graded before tomorrow. Your students have been asking for them."

So this is the teaching assistant, the young woman who merits homemade _plomeek_ soup.

The cadet's bright brown eyes search Spock's face intently. Something in Spock's posture shifts and the cadet relaxes visibly.

"Please," he says, "let me introduce you to my mother. Mother, this is my teaching assistant, Cadet Uhura."

"Amanda," she says quickly, reaching out her hand.

"Nyota," the cadet says, pressing her fingers into Amanda's palm, the edges of her mouth curling into a smile.

_She cannot unknow something once she knows it._

On the other hand, fishing expeditions aren't always successful—particularly when the men in her life want to keep something from her.

"We're on our way to dinner," Amanda says, looking up at Spock and then back. "Would you care to join us?"

"Mother," Spock says quietly, "another time, perhaps. Cadet Uhura has said that she has work she must do tonight."

The cadet's smile fades as suddenly as it bloomed. Disappointment, obviously—and more?

"Thank you, but….that's right. I really have to finish—"

"Another time then," Amanda says, careful not to upset Spock by pressing further.

Giving a small smile, Spock's assistant turns to walk towards the lab.

"Let me know when you have a chance to check your messages," Spock says, stopping her in her tracks.

"My messages?"

"I forwarded a note to you from Admiral Keening," he says, "though you may have already gotten another notification."

"I don't think so," the young woman says.

The conversation Amanda had overheard earlier in Spock's apartment—the upcoming trip. This must be what he is referring to.

"The Academy is being recognized for the language tutorial program," he says, "at the Feynman Conference in Amsterdam this weekend. Admiral Keening wants someone to represent the department. Professor Artura is visiting Andoria at the moment—though his aide has expressed an interest in attending."

"That's wonderful! Are you going? Do you have to make a talk?"

Any disappointment she had been feeling earlier seems to have evaporated. The cadet fairly bounces on her toes—a dancer for sure, Amanda thinks—and beams at Spock.

"I have no choice," Spock says, "though your participation is optional. The presentation will be minimal—though you are, of course, welcome to come. Some of the other workshops may be of interest to you."

Even a stranger would see how pleasing the idea is to the two of them. From the side Amanda watches them make eye contact. Something is definitely being said.

"Yes, I want to go!" the cadet says, and Spock tilts his head slightly and nods. He takes Amanda's arm again and they head down the hall toward the lift.

"Good night," Amanda calls over her shoulder, but the cadet has already disappeared into the lab.

No matter. They will be together this weekend.

Tomorrow after her radiation treatment, Amanda can scurry out of the way, catching a mid-morning shuttle to Seattle. Chris has offered to pick her up since Cecilia will be at work until later in the afternoon.

Then Spock and his assistant can go to the conference. Where did he say it was? Amsterdam? No, Leiden, a smaller university town nearby. She remembers visiting a friend there once in college and seeing an ancient windmill still in operation, its long, tubular metal arms whirling on top of a turbine like a fan.

Thinking of Chris reminds her that she hasn't asked about Spock's visit to Seattle earlier in the week, and she asks about the visit to the lawyer as they wait for the lift.

"It was satisfactory," he says curtly, their bond trickling down in wattage as he does. Something unpleasant then—though Amanda can't imagine what. An argument about the will? Perhaps one of Cecilia's daughters was unhappy with turning Aunt Matilda's bequest into a land trust.

Rachel, most likely—the one with drama in her veins.

Asking anything further will get her nowhere. She sees that determined look in his eye, the one that means he is _closed for business_.

Chris will tell her. Or Cecilia. She'll know soon enough.

Everything.

Or maybe not. What does she know, really? That his teaching assistant, that lovely young woman, was as bright and warm as a flame as she spoke. That Spock was a candle flickering in her eddy.

Fanciful imaginings. Nothing of real substance, as Sarek would say.

When they exit the building Spock leads the way to the nearest campus gate, their plan to find a place close by to eat before heading back to his apartment for the night. As they draw closer, she can see some disturbance at the gate, some gathering of people on the sidewalk outside.

Spock slows and then stops.

"Mother—" he says, but someone in the crowd catches sight of him and yells.

"Go home!"

Two guards at the entrance swivel in unison and see Amanda and Spock standing there.

"Commander," one guard says over the noise of the crowd. "You might want to exit by another route."

Amanda watches Spock's face cloud over.

"What is it?"

But he doesn't answer, and the guard says, "They have permission to demonstrate at this gate only."

"Who? Who has permission?"

"Come on, Mother," Spock says tersely, taking her by the arm.

"Who are they?" she says, looking up at his profile as they head back across the campus. "Why are they here?"

Spock's stride is so long that Amanda has to take two steps for each of his—and her breathing quickly becomes labored. Finally Spock slows and she asks again, "Who are they?"

His cheek twitching, he says, "They call themselves Earth United. Recently they staged protests here and in other major cities."

"But who are they?" Amanda says, confused. "What do they want?"

"They want me," Spock says, looking straight ahead, "and others like me to go away."

 _That familiar ache—the one she knows has dogged him all his life—of being at home nowhere._ At moments like this she feels the guilt of giving him his _otherness._

They are almost across campus before she dares to break the silence.

"Would it be alright," she says, "if we grab something quick to eat? Maybe even just take it back to the apartment?"

She hears him breathe deeply and he nods. A single guard stands at the east gate and they pass through it quickly, darting together across the street to a nondescript building with a few small tables and chairs outside.

Pushing open the door, Amanda hears a bell and sees a young dark-skinned man with a shock of black hair leaning on the counter. He gives her a hesitant smile and she returns it—and his smile broadens.

"Good evening, Commander," the young man says. Spock doesn't look back as he makes his way to a lighted cooler in the rear of the store. Despite herself, Amanda sighs. So much for instilling those social niceties.

The cooler is surprisingly well-stocked to be so small, with various sandwiches and wraps and even, she notes with surprise, containers of _kaasa_ juice for sale. When she puts her hand out to pick up a sandwich, Spock startles her by speaking quietly at her ear.

"Nyota says the wraps are superior to the other sandwiches."

"Oh," she says, putting the sandwich back and leaning forward over the cooler. "Which ones—"

"Her preference is for the spinach and tomato," he says.

"I see," Amanda says, taking the wrap Spock hands her.

And she _does_ see. _Nyota_ , not _Cadet Uhura_. Meals shared, preferences noted.

Her clueless son. Look what he has let slip.

The intimate marriage of courtship and food. She thinks fondly of a little restaurant nearby where she and Sarek had innocently consumed a meal seasoned with cinnamon. Afterwards she had vowed to replicate it and had bought a red tagine just so she could.

The red tagine that she had given to Spock when he first left home for San Francisco. She wonders if he still has it, if he's ever used it.

It might be interesting to find out.

She cannot unknow about the protesters at the gate, cannot unremember them—even with her human ability for denial—but she can forget them for the rest of the evening and think about other things she doesn't know for certain but would like to find out.

Placing her hand lightly on his forearm, she lets him lead her up the aisle to the counter up front, like a fisherman letting the trout think he is heading to safe waters, waiting to reel him in.

X X X X X X X

For as long as he can remember, his mother has loved tomatoes—eating them raw with salt or pepper or even sugar or mayonnaise; adding them to stews; slicing them into small cubes and baking them until they are sweet and dry and adding them to salads or gathering up a handful like popped Terran corn.

Spock, on the other hand, has never cared for them very much. Compared to Vulcan vegetables they are mushy, water-logged and bland. Their flavor, if they can be said to have any, is indeterminate, too mildly acidic to have much bite against the hot peppers and sharp herbs his Vulcan palate prefers.

His father's reaction when Amanda serves tomatoes is polite and distant. He eats them but rarely comments on them.

The only one who shares her enthusiasm is Sybok.

Or did.

As they walk to the market deli, Spock wonders idly as he often does where his brother is now—where he has been for more than a dozen years. Reaching out he tries to sense him but doesn't. There is his mother, her emotions as incandescent as a light bulb, and his father's quiet presence. And nothing more.

Yet he is certain that Sybok is alive—somewhere.

"Do you genuinely enjoy tomatoes?" Spock had asked him once after Sybok had eaten two portions at the mid-day meal.

His brother had eyed him carefully and said, "It makes your mother happy if I do," which, Spock realized later, was not an answer.

Amanda's search for a variety that could grow in the desert climate of Vulcan was ongoing and serious. Each year before the growing season she ordered seeds, read journals, conferred on subspace and in person with other gardeners. The summer that Spock turned 12 she was busy with an experimental hybrid that was less of a _"water hog"_ than other varieties and which was reputed to be especially flavorful.

Spock was not enthused but he helped his mother regularly in the garden.

Setting out the plants in orderly rows was satisfying, though pinching off the suckers and trimming the weaker branches was less so.

Still, it was time with his mother. Lately he had been more involved with his school work, and chess lessons with the chess master Truvik took a great deal of energy.

And then there was Stonn. The relentless bullying was frightening at first and then wearying, mostly because he had to struggle to hide it from his mother. Through their bond he sensed her concern when he came home bruised or scuffed or later than expected, and he learned to winnow down their connection until it was a mere thread of what it had been before, keeping her at a distance.

"It is to be expected," he overhead his father tell her one night as he sat up late reading in his bed. "Spock is at the age when he needs more privacy."

"But I'm his mother," Amanda had protested, and his father had said in his rumbling baritone, "Exactly."

He overheard them again, this time arguing, the night after the headmaster called and had them take him home.

"Several of the children who witnessed the altercation say that Spock was provoked," the headmaster said, explaining why Spock was being suspended for several days instead of being expelled after beating Stonn so badly that he required medical attention. "Nevertheless, his lack of control—"

"Understood," Sarek said, and beside him Amanda had sniffed loudly enough to catch both men's attention.

Her fury did not abate when they got home, though Spock had the uncanny feeling that she was not mad at him but at his father, or at the headmaster—or perhaps at Stonn himself.

After she sent him to his room she rounded on Sarek with such force that Spock closed his door and sat on his bed, his hands holding a PADD, his eyes wandering over the page without comprehending anything.

The door effectively muffled his mother's words but her tone was unmistakable.

The next morning his father was gone before sunrise and his mother cracked his door and told him that she would be back at mid-day after she finished her tutorials at the local elementary school. He was free to come out of his room but not to go anywhere else—was that clear?

It was.

After foraging for some fruit he wandered out into the early morning cool into the garden. There was the row of hybrid tomatoes, most of them flowering profusely, a few already sporting small green tomatoes the size of marbles.

A gift for his mother—he would weed the garden and trim the tomatoes. He finished his fruit quickly and picked up the garden hoe.

The soil at the base of the tomato plants was packed from the steady watering and he attacked that first. High in silicates, the soil had a glittering quality to it that he had not fully appreciated before—as the sun rose it alternated hues from rose to orange to pink. With his garden hoe he chopped at the packed dirt so that more water could seep down. Then he moved up the row of plants and snipped away the withered leaves and dried stems.

By the time his mother returned he had finished and showered and was reading an assignment from his biology teacher. He heard her pass through the house and open the door from the kitchen to the outside portico, allowing the early afternoon wind to cool the house.

And then he heard her scream.

Dropping his PADD on the floor and dashing down the hall, he saw her re-entering from the back door.

"What did you do!"

He knew at once that she meant the garden. In a flash he broadcast what he had spent the last few hours doing—showed her the hoe in his hands, the way he had broken up the clumps of soil at the base of the plants.

"Come look!" she said out loud and he followed her onto the portico. Even from here he could see that the tomato plants were drooping and drying in the sun.

"Look what you did," she said, her voice sadder and less angry now—less shocked.

_What could he say?_

"That was not my intention."

With a huff she said, "Of course it wasn't!"

Sometimes when his mother was angry she said things that sounded factual but were meant to provoke an emotional response in him. Was this one of those comments?

With a sigh she turned around and went back inside. In a minute he followed her, uncertain what to do. For a few moments he stood in the doorway, watching her as she filled the kettle and put on tea. Not once did she look at him, and finally he went back to his room and shut the door.

"Such excitement," Sybok said later that evening when he came home and sat on the edge of Spock's bed. "First getting yourself tossed out of school for the week, and now getting rid of the vegetables you despise."

"I really did not intend to harm the tomatoes," Spock said, and Sybok said, "And the boy at school? Did you intend to harm him?"

Spock had looked down, convinced that Sybok would chastise him for losing his temper.

But his brother surprised him, tapping him gently on the nose, the way he had teased him when he was very small.

"You could replant them," Sybok said, and for a moment Spock was confused. "Amanda still has some of the seeds left."

"The growing season is too far advanced," Spock said. "They would not have time to mature."

Sybok had leaned back, one hand bracing himself on the bed.

"True," he said, "but that does not mean you should not do it. It would make your mother happy."

"But there will be no time to get any tomatoes—"

"She will be glad that you tried anyway."

Even as he planted the seeds he knew his attempt would be futile, that nothing would come of all his efforts.

For the rest of his suspension he labored in the garden, pulling out the dead plants and watering the seeds until they germinated. By the time he returned to school, little seedlings were poking up through the dusty soil.

As he predicted, the plants set almost no fruit at all—though as Sybok had predicted, his mother didn't seem to mind. She seemed, in fact, happy with him.

Right before the first frost he noticed one tomato and pointed it out to his mother. Only one in an entire row of bushy plants—but it was something.

Two days later all of the plants were dead, beheaded by the ice crystals that made the desert nights such a danger. At the evening meal, Amanda served him sliced tomato, red on the outside but still pale green in the middle.

Surprised, Spock looked across the table, first at his father whose mild gaze gave nothing away, and then at Sybok, who nodded so slightly that Spock almost missed it.

 _She would enjoy it more than I will_ , he thought, but Sybok shook his head.

_She prefers giving it to you._

One glance at his mother and he knew this was true. He ate the tomato, all of it.

She's been nudging him all evening for information that he isn't sure he wants to give. The earlier encounter with the woman down the hall has spooked him in a way that is unexpected.

All week he has countered his anxiety with rigorous exercise and meditation and music, sometimes getting so little sleep that his focus drifts during his working hours. Inexcusable. Even rearranging his schedule so that he has far less contact with Nyota has not been of any benefit. Instead of feeling less drawn to her, he feels himself pulled harder in her absence, like being sucked into a vacuum.

So this is what humans mean when they say they are _miserable_.

"Nyota says the wraps are superior to the other sandwiches."

"Oh," his mother says, putting the sandwich back and leaning forward over the cooler. "Which ones—"

"Her preference is for the spinach and tomato," he says.

"I see," she says, her voice throaty and full of unspoken emotion. He lets her have a glimmer—as brief as lightning—of himself and Nyota sitting right here at this small round table, eating a meal.

A gift for his mother—this little morsel—an offering of sorts.

Her obvious happiness lifts his misery.


	11. The Eye of the Hurricane

**Disclaimer: I borrowed some of these characters and made up others. All of them are in my pickle.**

When she hears the explosion, Nyota doesn't yet realize that life as she knows it will never be the same.

So many of the defining moments in her life started this way—surprising events, or even quiet ones, that only in retrospect became clear: places where the path she was walking took a sharp, irreversible turn.

Her decision to go to Starfleet instead of medical school, for instance.

One afternoon her language teacher in high school asked her to stay after the dismissal bell and invited her to tutor a younger student, the daughter of an Andorian businessman whose company was building a mining facility in the area. The Andorian girl was withdrawn, almost downcast, and her Standard was so garbled that her teachers were unable to assess how much—if anything—she was learning.

Nyota had been less than enthusiastic. Her advanced biology project took most of her free time—that and her self-imposed regimen of dance lessons and light martial arts practice.

"Mind _and_ body," she would say when her mother protested that she was pushing herself too hard.

"To be honest," the language teacher said, "Shrela may be very limited in what she can learn, but we won't know for certain unless we can communicate with her. With adults she's skittish. Maybe with a student? If you'll just meet with her…"

Nyota followed the teacher to the conference room in the office and saw a tiny blue girl sitting in an oversized chair. Her wispy white hair was flat and thin. Her antennae were oddly curled down.

Even without words Nyota could tell that the little girl was distressed.

"Hi," she said, sliding into the nearest chair. "I'm Nyota."

Shrela gave no indication that she heard. Nyota leaned closer and said, "What's your name?"

Again nothing. Beating back a wash of impatience—after all, she had plenty she needed to be doing right now—Nyota said, "I'm feeling a little hungry. Would you like to go with me to get a snack? The canteen is still open in the library. I noticed that they had honey bars at lunch."

She thought of the Andorian word for a sweet.

"Would you like a _sa'quara_?" she asked.

Finally Shrela looked up, her antennae unfurling a fraction. A good sign, Nyota decided. She held out her hand and waited.

"Come on," she said, "before they close. The honey bars are really good."

The little girl scooted forward in the chair until her feet touched the ground. With a hop, she grabbed Nyota's hand and stood up. As she did, she mumbled something softly.

"What was that?"

Shrela spoke again and this time Nyota caught a couple of words—not the usual Andorian accent, but something with a much flatter inflection.

"Your art lesson? Are you worried that you are late for your art lesson?"

Like most local schools, this one served very young children all the way to graduates. Their core academic courses were taught in the mornings and early afternoons. In the late afternoons students worked on individual projects or took lessons to extend their mastery of art and music and physical exercise, among other interests. Obviously Shrela was taking art lessons in the afternoon and was worried that she would be late.

"Oh," Nyota said, leading the way to the library where a student-run canteen sold snacks and beverages between classes. "Your teacher won't mind if you stop in to grab a snack before your lesson. He knows that everyone needs a break sometimes."

This was promising. Already the little girl was speaking to her clearly enough to be understood. What was wrong with the teachers that they couldn't understand her? Nyota felt herself bouncing a bit on the balls of her feet as she made her way to the back of the library.

"One honey bar," she told the student behind the counter. "Would you like one, too?"

Turning to Shrela, she was surprised to see the little girl holding back, her arms at her side, her chin tucked to her chest.

Instinctively, Nyota knelt down so that she was eye level with the little Andorian.

"A honey bar? Do you want one?"

Shrela did not look up.

Was she hard of hearing, perhaps? That could explain her unresponsiveness and her garbled language. Nyota remembered a deaf friend from elementary school whose oddly-lilting accent changed when her cochlear implant software was upgraded.

"Would you rather have something else?"

Shrela spoke so softly that Nyota had to strain to hear her.

"What was that? What do you want?"

But Shrela became mute, darting a glance at Nyota before looking toward the door. Her message was clear. She wanted to leave.

"Here's your bar," the student manning the canteen said, but Nyota waved her away.

"Later," she said, watching Shrela make her way to the exit.

So much for that.

That night she called up all the information she could on Andorian dialects. There were more than she had imagined—28 Federation recognized ones, and at least two that were reported to exist only on Andorian colony worlds. She listened to samples of them all until she could no longer distinguish any differences, she was that tired.

But the next morning she rose early and spent another hour scrolling through the samples and listening for the same flat inflection she had noted in Shrela's voice.

Finally she narrowed her choice to a likely one from the southern polar region. Downloading a vocabulary primer, she was almost late for school—and then she irked her calculus teacher by poring over the primer instead of doing her math classwork.

When the core academic dismissal bell rang, Nyota grabbed her satchel and headed to the art room in an adjacent building. Mr. Furniss looked up briefly when she walked in but then turned back to the student he was helping.

Nyota had always enjoyed Mr. Furniss' art classes and was sorry that she didn't have time to take more lessons. He was an easy-going, laid-back teacher who managed to push students by being neither overly critical nor overly complimentary.

"Not your best work," he told Nyota once when she had thrown together a sketch at the last minute. She was startled to feel hurt and relief—hurt at the criticism but relieved that Mr. Furniss didn't think her half-hearted work was the extent of her ability.

She never turned in shoddy work to him again.

Shrela was sitting at a large work table with a drawing tablet in front of her. When Nyota sidled up next to her, the little girl glanced up briefly and then went back to rubbing white and blue chalk across the paper.

The colors were sharp and the lines random—or so Nyota thought at first. But as she stood there watching over Shrela's shoulder, she suddenly realized what the little girl was drawing.

A snow storm. Home. Nyota said so in the flat Andorian dialect.

" _Is this where you are from_?"

The change in Shrela's demeanor was immediate. Her antennae straightened and she looked at Nyota and smiled.

" _Yes,"_ she said in the same unusual dialect. " _Ta'anna. It's summer there now, but in the winter, the storms last for days. It's lovely."_

Hearing Shrela speak, Mr. Furniss drifted across the room and made eye contact with Nyota.

_How did you do that?_

Nyota shrugged, but inwardly she was exultant.

Until the end of the term she met with Shrela almost every afternoon and tutored her in Standard—and was tutored, in turn, in Andorian. Using language this way was like having a key to unlock someone's thoughts—thrilling, actually, and gratifying. By the beginning of her senior year, Nyota surprised herself and her counselor when she didn't sign up for the pre-med exams but made an appointment with a Starfleet recruiter instead.

"I don't understand," her mother said later. "You've always talked about being a doctor. What's all this now about going into space?"

Nyota felt herself bristle and struggled not to sound annoyed.

"I haven't always thought about medicine," she said. "I wanted to be a dancer once."

Her mother rolled her eyes and Nyota hurried on.

"I can't really explain it, but being able to get into someone's mind with words…well, it's interesting. It's…important. Without communication we have nothing."

She could tell that her mother didn't agree. For a moment Nyota felt a tendril of panic— _her mother wouldn't let her go to the Academy!_ —but her panic was replaced almost immediately by a determination to get there no matter what.

As it turned out, her mother hadn't tried to stop her. She hadn't been entirely happy, either—but when Nyota headed off to San Francisco three years ago, her family had thrown her a big celebration and sent her off with more well-wishes than tears.

That seems like so long ago—a lifetime ago, really.

And now here she is, the ground shaking under her feet, literally and metaphorically, as the sonic grenade explodes and throws Spock across the hall, the metal service door blown off its hinges, landing on him.

They almost weren't in Leiden at all. The organizers had dallied late in inviting Spock and Professor Artura to present their tutorial rotation at the Feynman Conference. By the time the invitation came, Professor Artura was attending an annual memorial service on Andoria. Spock was given no choice—Starfleet wanted him there—and once his mother was safely on her way to Seattle after her radiation treatment, he took a shuttle to Amsterdam and made the short trip to Leiden, where the conference was taking place.

Nyota had taken a shuttle a day earlier. At Schiphol terminal she noted a crowd of Earth United protesters, though they were cordoned off away from the arrivals and seemed more intent on making a scene for the media. She hoped they would be gone before Spock got there; they were notorious for yelling imprecations at off-worlders.

Three different times Spock had to cancel his flight because his mother was too ill to continue her journey to her sister's. By the time he finally was on his way, Nyota was so restless that she paced the hotel room and kept her door cracked, waiting to see him coming down the hall.

Finally she spotted him, but she could tell even from a distance that he was distraught. Because of his mother? Or had he seen the growing crowd of Earth United protesters outside the conference center? She couldn't tell. As he drew closer, she swung the door open wide for him.

"What's wrong?" she said as he lowered his duffel to the floor and turned to her. He took a step and put his hands loosely around her waist, leaning his forehead to hers. Usually when they touched this way she sensed what he was thinking—or at the very least, what he was feeling. Today all she sensed was anger and dismay.

"What's wrong? What happened?"

He was quiet for several moments and she knew he was considering what to tell her. At one time his hesitation would have upset her, would have made her doubt the force of his attachment. Now she sees it for what it is, the way his mind catalogues and arranges and recalls. He gives no answer thoughtlessly.

"I have…missed you," he said, pulling her closer, and she sighed and put her arms around his neck.

The anger was still there. She felt it in his posture, in the tingle of his touch.

"You aren't telling me everything."

Rather than arguing with her—which she half-expected—Spock seemed to let go, to relent. He closed his eyes and leaned into her. His hand drifted up to the small of her back and she realized that he was trying to shepherd her to the bed.

 _Oh, my._ Whatever upset him earlier had been supplanted by…other concerns. She laughed but looked at him closely.

"Dinner's almost over. You better get something to eat before they close the buffet. You need to make an appearance," she said. "You've missed most of the conference, and people have been asking me where you are."

Spock opened his mouth to say something and she cut him off.

"And don't say that you don't care. These people are your colleagues—and they are curious to hear from you."

The disappointed expression on his face was so unabashed that she started to laugh again.

"Don't look at me that way," she said. "We'll have dessert—later."

The conference room was starting to empty but the steamer tables at the end of the room were still staffed and Nyota steered Spock to them.

"I tried that one and it was awful," she said pointing to a sliced purple vegetable sprinkled with chopped herbs. "Which means you will probably like it."

A large container of curry smelled wonderful but she warned him away from it because of the cinnamon content—something that had the same aphrodisiac properties as cacao for most Vulcans.

"Perhaps the chocolate cake?" Spock said.

Good. He was joking again. She felt her shoulders relax.

"Don't you dare! I said we would have dessert later," she said, "in my room. Not here now in front of everyone!"

As they moved from the table, Nyota spotted Captain Pike across the room.

"Uh oh. There's Pike's attaché again. I saw her on the shuttle here, but I didn't remember who she was until later. She was on that trip to Riverside Shipyard—though she wasn't there the whole time. It might be my imagination, but I think she's been watching me."

She knew how paranoid she sounded—but it was true. Every time she looked up, Nyota saw Natalie's eyes following them.

_Go._

Nyota brushed her fingertips across Spock's and willed him to take his plate to Captain Pike's table. He barely looked back as she made her way out the door.

Fifteen minutes later the first explosion sent acrid smoke throughout the hotel, setting off fire alarms and sprinklers. Nyota rushed from the room and joined the people heading down the stairwell.

Coughing and sweating, a harried crowd pressed forward. In the distance she heard sirens, and then, as she reached the bottom of the stairwell, another explosion rocked the building—this one closer and larger and more frightening.

And instantly she knows. Somehow Spock is part of it.

Her heart hammering in her throat, she pushes her way through the crowd, scrambles past a uniformed security officer and hears someone calling her back. The conference room where she had left Spock is so jammed with people that she can't enter. Instead she watches helplessly as two medics try to force their way through the door.

"Move! Move!" one yells in Standard, and finally, finally, the crowd parts enough to let them in. Without thinking, Nyota slips in behind them, craning her neck, looking for Spock.

Her mouth is parched and her throat so dry that it hurts to swallow.

Where is he?

From the corner of her eye she catches a glimpse of Captain Pike standing in a small clearing, a policeman beside him. Natalie is there, too, but not Spock.

The air is thick and the heat oppressive. For a moment Nyota feels lightheaded.

"Let me through," she says, elbowing a young man in a business suit. He grunts and moves to the side and Nyota is suddenly standing in front of Natalie.

"Where—" she begins, but Natalie's face is so stricken that the words die in Nyota's throat.

"He took…the grenade."

She isn't sure what happens then. Somehow she gets out of the conference room, past the milling crowd, past the people with cuts and broken bones, dust in their hair, bruises already purpling their faces.

 _I can't,_ she thinks, _I can't_ …but she isn't able to finish her thought.

_I can't._

The hallway leading out of the conference room is not as crowded and she makes her way toward the end where someone is lying on the floor, where several men are lifting a metal door and carrying it out of the way. Another medic is leaning down, and a Starfleet MP holds up his hand to stop her.

 _I can't_ , she thinks, peering around the police officer to the person on the floor, the person being gently lifted forward, the person covered and caked with black grime and soot, the person she is certain is Spock, and then the MP steps back and she sees that she is right, that Spock's hair is matted with dark green blood and the pallor of his face alarming.

He's alive, blinking against the overhead lights and then looking up at her as she winkles her way past the security and medics and kneels at his side.

An hour is suddenly gone, and then two, and she can't put the events in order in her mind. Surely she never left as Spock's cuts were cleaned and stitched, though later she has no memory of watching the procedure. The debriefing—she must have been sitting with him when the authorities took his first of many statements, and she must have heard the doctor exclaim in wonder that Spock had been lucky. Had she rolled her eyes then, making sure Spock saw, perhaps apeing his usual response: "Belief in luck is the human need to impose order on a random universe"?

She doesn't know.

Nor can she recall Natalie trading shuttle assignments with her so that she can leave on the same shuttle that Spock has been assigned to. Nor can she remember stowing her duffel or taking her seat or anything about the flight back to San Francisco except Spock's face, ashen and somber, and the touch of his fingers in her palm as they fall asleep, exhausted, shaken to the core, indifferent to anything or anyone around them.

When they disembark at last the familiar chill of wet air wakes her from her mind-blindness. The duffel on her shoulder gives her an off-center, shambling gait, but she welcomes the distraction. One foot in front of the other. One more block from the terminal to the Academy.

At last the east gate comes into view.

The guard motions them in without a word. The first building on the left is the faculty apartments where Spock lives. He heads down the walkway to the entrance and Nyota stops where the path forks across the commons towards her dorm. Standing there in the dark she watches him walking as he always does—his shoulders straight, his stride long and steady, no hint at all of the trauma of the day. When he doesn't look back she sighs and starts across the commons.

"Nyota?"

His voice is so quiet that she almost doesn't hear him.

Turning, she sees him standing by the front entrance, his key card in one hand. Something in his posture, in the way he stands motionless, is an invitation.

The face of the blonde down the hall flashes in her memory.

The smart thing would be to go on to the dorm.

_Spock could have died today._

_I can't-_

Pivoting around, she shifts her duffel to her other shoulder and heads toward the faculty building.

As soon as the door of his apartment closes behind them, Spock pulls her to him so tightly that she feels what she had missed before—the tremble that seems to consume him from head to foot. Tipping her head up to kiss him, she is startled when he ducks his face away, pressing his cheek against hers as he angles forward to nip lightly at her jaw.

He's done this before, this very Vulcan thing—this nipping and biting and running his fingers along the back of her neck while he does—but only in brief bursts, and always in the interlude between kisses or caresses that seem to satisfy them both.

Not tonight. Tonight he is impatient with human strokes and sensations. His fingers go to her face and she is suddenly there, in his mind.

 _Forgive me,_ he says, and she sees in an instant that he wants her forgiveness for melding with her this way, this fast—not like the gradual dance around each other's thoughts they usually do when they make love, Spock holding back until Nyota finds her own rhythm and pleasure before pressing forward.

 _Forgive me,_ he says, and he shows her a glimpse of himself running down the hall of the conference center, the grenade in his hand, the calculated search for a safe place to let it detonate—the sorrow he felt when he believed he would die.

Her horror at the image almost makes him pull back but she stops him.

_I can't—I can't bear not knowing._

She lets herself be led to the bedroom, stands while he undresses them both, his fingers stilling her own when she reaches for a button.

She lets herself be lifted and placed on the bed, like something fragile, and she lets herself dwell in his mind and sense the urgency he feels as he lowers himself onto her, heavy and hot and insistent, rough and grappling in a way that makes her heart race.

Underneath the press and the rush she glimpses great anger and fear and strength, too, and she knows that these are things he often feels but hides from her, keeping his Vulcan sensibilities in check.

His certainty that he would die has freed him tonight from that restraint. Again she tries to kiss him and again he dodges her and bears down instead, almost making her cry out. She feels his teeth along her collarbone.

His thoughts are wordless images and emotions and she is almost dizzy with them.

 _Her own need to make sense of things with words_ —she calls out this need and he pauses in his motions, breathing hard.

His frustration wells up like a wave and she stands at the verge between their minds and watches him struggling to find words and failing.

 _Here_ , he says at last. She sees them as they are now, tangled together on his bed, but she knows the image is not what he wants to share.

The _feeling_ is. And more, the _meaning_ of what they are doing.

How what they are doing is not just sex or lust but an acknowledgment of their mortality, a frantic beating back of the inevitable entropy and death pulling everyone into oblivion.

 _But it's more than that_ , she thinks and she feels him agree.

She offers some words— _love and attachment, affection and desire_ —and he takes them up and examines them and she feels his relief that the words have been illuminated.

 _I cannot—_ he says and she hushes him.

He grips her wrist and bends back her arm above her head, his other hand resting on her cheek, linking them as he bites the tender skin at the crook of her elbow.

The pinch of his teeth pushes her over the edge and she shudders in his arms. In a moment he follows her, and then the only sound is their breathing, ragged and hoarse and complete.

When he lets his fingers slip from her face, she sighs at the loss of his mental touch as well as the physical one.

They do not say what they both know, that she cannot stay the night. Only when she feels herself starting to drowse in his arms does Nyota rouse herself enough to get dressed.

"I can walk with you," Spock says as she zips up her boots. His words make her unaccountably sad.

"You don't need to."

But he does, his arms tucked behind him in his professor's attitude as they lean into the night wind that scours the commons. Nyota crosses her arms against the cool air and they say little. The distance between them is necessary and almost unbearable.

When the dorm comes into sight they pause and she turns to look at him, the small bandage across his stitched brow glimmering white in the moonlight, the rest of his face in shadow.

Suddenly she feels like that small Andorian student, the one whose ordinary language proved inadequate in a new place.

There are words that ought to be said but she doesn't know what they are.

 _Thank you_ , she wants to say, not to him but to the universe—to whatever forces of _luck_ brought him safely here.

But he would not understand that sentiment—indeed, she doesn't quite understand it herself.

"Goodnight, Commander," she says at last, unhappy that she has to be so circumspect. Taking a quick glance around she notes the empty commons, the dark entrance to the dorm. Darting forward, she kisses him lightly and pulls away.

But not before she feels him respond as a human for the first time that evening—leaning into her, closing his eyes and parting his lips, his gentle longing like the calm after a storm.

X X X X X X X X

"You better not have sold me a pig in a poke."

Christopher Pike is clearly annoyed. That's not surprising. These days he's often annoyed by snafus and overruns as he gets the _Enterprise_ ready to launch.

Normally Natalie Jolsen is a good sounding board—indeed, it might be what Chris values most about her, what he will miss most about her company when he ships out and she leaves the service.

Today, however, she isn't willing to cater to his occasional bad mood.

"What are you talking about?"

"You know what a pig in a poke is, don't you? Maybe you don't. _City girl_."

He says it with more affection than the words imply. Despite herself, Natalie grins.

"What's Commander Spock done now?" she asks. Immediately Chris scowls.

"How'd you know I was talking about him?"

They are sitting in Chris's office near the Embarcadero, a featureless square room with stacks of boxes along one wall and a desk with PADDs and flimplasts a foot deep across the top. In one drawer, Natalie knows, Chris keeps a flask of scotch.

She points to that drawer now and says, "Because your drawer is cracked open. He's the only person I've ever known to drive you to drink during the day."

"Dammit," Chris says, shoving the drawer shut with his foot. "I can't keep any secrets."

"So," Natalie prompts, "what's up now? Did he change his mind?"

"He did not," Chris says. "But I almost wish he had."

"Because?"

"Listen," Chris says, "we both agree that guy's a genius. And as far as I'm concerned, he proved his stuff last week."

Natalie looks longingly at the scotch drawer. The mention of the protests and the explosion at Leiden make her _thirsty_.

Twice in the week and a half since the conference, she's relived the horror in her dreams—that moment when a small group of protesters forced their way into the conference room and Chris had walked up to them while Spock circled around behind. Chris had rushed the armed men; Spock had disabled one and bystanders had helped subdue the other two.

The telltale whine of a detonating grenade sent Spock running from the room, the grenade tucked in the crook of his arm. When it exploded shortly afterward, Natalie was sure he was dead.

Chaos and smoke and plaster particles everywhere—and there in front of her was Spock's student assistant, Uhura, Natalie watching her spin away in a frenzy, wrecking her way through the intractable crowd.

And later, Uhura staying with Spock while his minor wounds were dressed, her eyes hardly leaving his, her hands finding excuses to touch him whenever she could.

If she suspected before, Natalie _knew_ after watching them wait for the shuttle back to San Francisco from Amsterdam.

They were _involved._

Sexually, undoubtedly. Something more? She isn't sure.

Quite frankly she doesn't care, either.

Except that Chris has offered the Commander a position as his first officer of the _Enterprise._ If Spock screws up—if he's accused of something as serious a fraternization—it will bring embarrassment to the ship and to the captain.

 _Her_ captain. Her friend.

That's not going to happen if she can help it.

"So, are you going to make me guess what he's done now?"

Chris rolls his shoulders and leans back in his chair.

"It's not what he's done," he says, drawing out his words and running his hand along the armrest of the chair. "It's how he's done it. At least, I think that's the problem."

"That's still not telling me much," Natalie says.

"Okay," Chris says, tipping his chair forward and leaning his elbows on the desk. "So go figure. Not an hour after I submitted his candidacy, Admin sends me notification that our Vulcan Commander has a dossier with red flags I need to see before proceeding. Now I'm asking you, did you sell me a pig in a poke?"

Red flags? Surely not the student assistant. Something that serious would already have been dealt with if someone had reported it. Negative student evaluations are more likely. The Commander has a reputation as a hard-ass professor. All it would take would be one disaffected cadet to get a flag posted in his file.

Natalie says so to Chris but he shakes his head.

"Maybe. But the lieutenant from Admin implied something else."

To her surprise, Natalie feels her heart starting to speed up. Should she have told Chris her suspicions about the student aide and the Commander? Even if the existing flags are innocent enough, the normal vetting of an officer may uncover any other misconduct. Admin will probably call up surveillance tapes of his office and home—check his public computer trails, his medical files, interview family and friends and acquaintances.

She looks up and meets Chris' gaze.

This level of investigation is unusual—but then, the _Enterprise_ is the fleet's flagship.

And a public relations scandal could bring down Chris' career.

"You want me to talk to him, see what I can find out?"

"As usual," Chris says, handing her an encrypted PADD, "you got me figured out. Here's the dossier."

Chris isn't one to dodge unpleasant duties, but Natalie is reasonably sure this is a task that should fall to her. For starters, Chris spends most of his time at the shipyards these days and is rarely in town.

And secondly, she's going to make sure she's the one who talks with the Commander. Somehow she can't picture that conversation between him and Chris.

"He's in class until 1400," Chris says, standing and walking to the door of the office. "I told him to report to you by 1410."

"Thanks," Natalie says wryly. She makes a show of glancing at her wrist chronometer and says, "That gives me…what…twenty minutes to get ready?"

"I have confidence in you," Chris says, heading out.

Pushing back some of the stacked PADDs on the top of Chris' desk, Natalie clears an area for her tablet computer and begins scrolling through Spock's dossier. She ignores the simple biographical stuff—she's read most of it already in his application. As she is about to skip ahead to his Academy record, a flag catches her eye. Odd. Usually the background biography is pretty straightforward.

An intelligence report tags Spock's _relationship to the Vulcan ambassador_ as problematic.

"What the hell," Natalie mutters, reading on. The report notes a possibility that a hostile force could target Spock in an attempt to manipulate the Vulcan government. Relatives of Federation officials have, in the past, been kidnapped and held as bargaining chips.

Natalie tries to imagine anyone kidnapping Spock and she sees, instead, the image from the conference room in Leiden as he circled around behind the attackers, catlike, and incapacitated one armed man simply by touching him. Or pinching him. Whatever it is Vulcans do, not even breaking a sweat.

Or the Vulcan ambassador—giving in to blackmail or extortion? She doesn't know Sarek personally—in fact, she's not sure she would recognize him if she saw him—but if he's anything like the Vulcans she does know, he wouldn't bat an eye at the prospect of paying ransom for a kidnapped son. Of course he wouldn't do it.

She takes a breath and relaxes a fraction. If this is typical of the other red flags….

She has just started reading the second flagged note when Spock is suddenly there, silently standing in the doorway. In spite of herself, Natalie jumps when she sees him.

"Commander," she says quickly, trying to catch her breath. "Please have a seat."

Spock takes the seat closest to the desk, eyeing the clutter with undisguised…disgust? Scorn? In a human his expression might be called arrogant. In a Vulcan….well, Natalie is cautious about assigning too much meaning to the facial expressions of people who cultivate them so carefully.

"Do you know why Captain Pike asked you to report here?"

Natalie's abruptness is calculated to catch the Commander off guard but he seems unflappable.

"To sign the transfer papers from the Academy," he replies at once.

"Negative," she says, watching him from the corner of her eye. This time she sees him react—a slight narrowing of his gaze. He doesn't like being wrong.

"The Admin office has flagged several concerns in your dossier for further investigation," she says.

Spock blinks in what Natalie assumes is surprise.

"We can probably clear them up today," she says. "For instance….this."

Thumbing through several screens, Natalie reads, "Your tactical training professor gave you a failing mark one quarter when you were a first year cadet. Explain."

Spock's face contorts slightly—and Natalie feels a stab of guilt about intentionally humiliating him this way. It isn't true, either, that he failed one quarter—but he had been close. She sits back and waits to see if he will correct her.

"I…was not…proficient in working with human groups," he says and she adds, "Professor Hill said you were not a team player."

This rankles him—he flushes and visibly steadies himself.

"That," he says, "depends on the team."

"I see. Professor Hill also says that you accepted the extra work necessary to….become proficient…and improved your performance by the end of the term."

Glancing up from the PADD after she reads the note aloud, Natalie is startled to see Spock watching her with an almost angry intensity. He says nothing, however—and she realizes that she hasn't actually asked him a question.

"Do you wish to comment?"

"I do not."

Now it is Natalie's turn to flush. Ask a stupid question….

"Commander," she says, "we could sit here all afternoon and go through each of these items one by one, or you could save us both a lot of time if you answer one question right now."

Looking up, she sees his expression become wary.

Waiting for a beat for him to say something, she realizes her mistake and says, "So. Here's the deal. Do you have any reason to believe that anything in this dossier disqualifies you for the position of first officer of the _Enterprise_?"

"As I have not read it, that question is not logical."

Natalie looks longingly at the drawer where Chris' flask lies hidden. She sighs and starts again.

"But you know your own history. I'm asking if you have done anything that could keep you from serving satisfactorily on the _Enterprise_."

"You asked," Spock says in the definite tone of a professor correcting an errant student, "if anything in the dossier disqualifies me. I cannot assume that the dossier is an accurate record of my history. It may include reports which are unfounded or unsubstantiated or hearsay."

Suddenly Natalie is very tired.

"I understand," she says, not bothering to hide the weariness in her voice. "Do _you_ believe that you are qualified to serve?"

"I would not have applied for the post if I believed otherwise."

"And do _you_ know of any reason you should not serve?"

"I know of none."

"Do you have any reason to suspect that a routine investigation might uncover any information that would change that assessment?"

"I cannot speculate on what _might_ be uncovered—"

"Commander! Is there anything to be uncovered? That's what I'm asking."

He seems to withdraw into himself for a moment and Natalie holds her breath. Vulcan honesty is legendary. If he _is_ involved with his student aide, now would be the time to say something.

"I know of nothing that would compromise my duty as first officer of the _Enterprise_."

An answer of sorts. And also not.

Natalie sighs and flicks off the PADD and closes her tablet computer.

"Very well," she says. "But be advised that because this is the _Enterprise_ we're talking about, the investigation will be ongoing and thorough."

She gives him a meaningful look but his expression is neutral. Perhaps because he was so difficult earlier, his equanimity irritates her and she decides to needle him a little more before turning him loose.

"Everyone is expected to be on his best behavior right up until launch. That includes you, Commander."

He nods fractionally and she dismisses him.

Prickly bastard. She feels a rush of solidarity with Chris.

The drawer. Pulling it open, she rummages around until she finds the flask.

Tipping it up to her lips, she offers herself a toast.

"Here's to smooth sailing."

X X X X X X X

"I know of nothing that would compromise my duty as first officer of the _Enterprise_."

Three days ago when he had said this to Captain Pike's attaché, he had meant it—sincerely.

 _The master of misdirection_ , his mother sometimes calls him.

And that, too, is true.

He knew what Natalie was asking.

Choosing not to acknowledge it was a different matter entirely.

If, as Nyota suggests, Natalie has some inkling about their relationship, there is nothing he can do at this point except wait to see if she reports him.

Worrying about things he cannot change is illogical.

Changing _things_ so he won't have to worry is…unappealing.

He looks across his office where Nyota is sitting at the little table she has turned into a makeshift desk, her computer propped open precariously, her pens and styluses arranged neatly along one side. She's hunched over, her arms bent, elbows out, reading something on the monitor. When she moves her head, her ponytail swishes across her back in a way that makes him uncomfortably aroused.

 _Focus._ Shifting in his chair behind his desk so that Nyota is no longer in his peripheral vision helps. He starts to read his mail.

Since the Feynman Conference he has been inundated with mail, most of it an annoyance—letters of concern from people he's worked with in the past, asking after his health and safety. Anyone paying attention to the news would know that he was not seriously harmed in the blast.

Still, Nyota scolded him the first day when he deleted a batch of messages without answering any.

"Your friends are worried," she protested, and he had replied, "Their worry is a waste of energy, theirs and mine."

Some of the letters are from researchers wanting to know more about the lab tutorial program he was scheduled to present at the conference but never got to. Those he answers promptly.

The people he knows best—his parents, Chris—have called him several times in the past week—also an annoyance, though he recognizes their need to reassure themselves that he is well. His mother, he sees, has also sent him a letter. Even before he opens it, he knows it will say almost the same words she communicates by subspace each time they speak.

" _We miss you. Be careful."_

A large quantity of the mail is from Captain Pike, copies of correspondence he has to and from suppliers and builders and crew. None of those require answers, but Spock dutifully reads them all, committing them to memory.

An unwanted invitation to dinner from Andrea Olson—a written version of the one she delivered yesterday afternoon when she passed him coming into the building.

And there. A letter from the Administration Office and copied to the legal department. That one gives him pause.

 _Request for immediate reply_ , the subject header says.

His hand hovers over the keyboard but he pauses.

 _You cannot unknow something_ , he father has told him more than once.

Like so many of the defining moments of his life, this one may signal a sharp deviation in his expected trajectory…like the snub that sent him careening from the Vulcan Science Academy as a career, or the night he and Nyota were caught in a sudden downpour and ended up for the first time in his bed.

"Would you care for some tea?"

His voice sounds unnaturally loud in the small office and Nyota turns swiftly from what she is reading on the computer.

"Oh!" she says. "I don't think so. But thanks for asking."

She swivels back around and he feels an unaccountable heaviness in his chest.

"Some unrecirculated air, then? Would you like to accompany me for a walk?"

He's never interrupted their workday like this, and Nyota responds with a startled glance. For a moment he is sure she will refuse his suggestion, will remind him of all the work waiting to be completed.

Her expression flickers and she says, "Okay. That might be nice."

Although the mention of fresh air had been an excuse to get up and move, Spock feels a measure of relief when they step outside. It is one of those rare San Francisco afternoons when the weather is sunny and warm and dry—not sunny or warm or dry enough to remind him of home, but comforting nonetheless.

They head directly across the commons toward the small amphitheater cut into the side of the hill, a greenway path around its outer edge. On days like this, classes often convene here or students congregate to sit and chat. The bay is visible through the trees behind the stage. In the other direction, thick shrubbery protects against the wind.

Only a few people are here now—a group of three students eating an impromptu picnic lunch and several other people reading or lying across the seats, sunbathing.

Rather than sitting, Spock and Nyota amble around the outer ring slowly, neither looking directly at the other.

As they walk, he listens to Nyota's steady breathing and catches her scent in the breeze. He senses her curiosity and appreciates her silence as he considers what to say.

"I have not told you," he says at last, "all that occurred in my conversation with Captain Pike's attaché."

Their forward motion halts suddenly as Nyota stops and turns to him.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean," he says, "that your…suspicions about Commander Jolsen may be right. She cautioned me about the thoroughness of the vetting process."

"But—" Nyota says, frowning, "—she didn't say that she knew anything specific, did she?"

"Nothing specific; only implied."

He sees Nyota's mind racing and he feels a wave of frustration that he cannot touch her and share his thoughts directly. How inconvenient the spoken word is at times like this. What an impediment to communication.

"What do we need to do?" she says, and he starts forward down the pathway around the amphitheater again, Nyota following in his wake.

"There is nothing we _can_ do," he says, "except continue as we have."

_The master of misdirection._

Keeping his concern from her is unfair. He calculates the odds that she will be alarmed against his desire to tell her the truth.

"And," he says, watching her closely, "answer any questions that arise."

They walk another step and he adds, "Nyota, I received a message from the Administration and Legal Offices."

Before she can respond, he goes on.

"I have not read it. I wanted to tell you about it first."

"It may be nothing," she says, reaching out and touching his forearm before catching herself and looking around.

"Perhaps," he says, "or it may be a summons. Either way, you need not be concerned about your career in Starfleet. If I am accused—"

To his astonishment, she is not reassured but rounds on him in unmistakable fury.

" _That's_ why you brought me out here? To tell me that you will take all the blame? How do you think that makes me feel!"

It is not a question. He doesn't try to answer.

"We have to talk! I had no idea you were planning something like this."

"It may not be necessary. The note may be a formality only."

"Then let's read it! What were you thinking?"

Another non-question. He watches as she heads across the commons at such a furious clip that he has to hurry to catch up to her.

"Where?" she says when they get back to the office. "Where is the note?"

He leans forward over his keyboard and taps up the control for his mail. She stands so closely that he can hear her shallow breaths, feel the prickle of electricity from her skin.

"Please be advised," she reads aloud, her voice hoarse and uneven, "that a preliminary hearing is being convened to determine whether or not to proceed with a formal investigation into charges of professional misconduct—"

She stands upright and turns to him, her face only inches away. Without stopping to consider the open door behind him or the noise at the end of the hall or the possibility that Professor Artura's aide might peek in as he often does, he lets his fingers rest on her psi points, lightly, quickly.

_What does it mean?_

_Maybe nothing. Maybe everything._

Her panic almost overwhelms him and he closes his eyes.

_I won't lose you. I can't. I cannot._

He doesn't know whose thought this is—but he holds onto it like someone throwing out an anchor in a storm, knowing it won't catch, waiting to be washed out to sea.

**A/N: The action at the conference in Leiden is told from Spock's POV in "The Interview." His trouble with "team building" is explored in chapter 5 in "What We Think We Know."**


	12. Things Fall Apart

**Disclaimer: I do not own and do not profit from much, and certainly not from writing about these characters.**

Professor Artura stands at the door to Spock's half-empty office and makes the Andorian approximation of clearing his throat. With a sigh, Nyota looks up.

"Still no word from the Commander?"

"As soon as I hear something, I'll let you know," she says.

Instead of shuffling back down the hall to his own office as he usually does, the professor makes his way slowly to the chair nearest the small table where Nyota has set up her tablet computer. Now that Spock keeps all of his office hours in the computer sciences building, she could move her equipment to his more spacious desk.

But she can't imagine doing so. Taking over his desk is an acknowledgment that he is really gone. She isn't ready for that.

She'll have to move out soon enough anyway. Once the semester ends next week, she will officially transfer her assistantship to Professor Artura and the Academy will hire someone to replace Spock in the language department. His stint there wasn't supposed to last this long. The chair of the computer sciences department complained to the academic dean more than once that asking Spock to do double duty in two departments was unfair. The dean, not surprisingly, was unmoved.

That is, until Captain Pike tapped him as first officer of the _Enterprise_ and intervened.

"I don't mean to pry," Professor Artura says, settling himself in the chair and leaning toward Nyota. She gives him a wry look. Of course he means to pry. He wouldn't be here otherwise.

As if he can read her thoughts, the Andorian lets the ghost of a smile cross his face.

"I'm not asking you to violate a confidence," he says, his sibilant voice almost a hiss. "But I do need to talk to him. Soon. If you are in contact with him—"

"I'm not," she says so quickly that it sounds like a lie.

But for the past three weeks—ever since the notification about the upcoming hearing—Spock has been, if not quite incommunicado, then harder to reach. So hard to reach, in fact, that they have argued about it.

"We need to talk," she said two days ago, the last time she saw him.

She could tell he was considering a diversion—a flicker across his brow, a quick intake of breath—and then he lifted his gaze and met her own, apparently deciding to be straightforward instead.

"There is nothing left to say," he said, and she felt the same fury and helplessness wash over her that had characterized their last few conversations. Spock was adamant that he wasn't going to accept counsel from Starfleet—and was even seriously considering an outright resignation.

"You can't," Nyota argued, "until you at least see what evidence they have. It could all be hearsay, and you would be throwing away your career for nothing!"

"You may be right," he said, but she wasn't convinced that he wasn't saying this simply to quiet her objections.

On the subject of having her testify that the relationship was consensual, he was less willing to compromise.

"If the evidence is such that my guilt is incontrovertible," he said, "then your testimony will be unnecessary. The odds are high that you will not be asked to testify even if the evidence is not conclusive. In fraternization cases, the culpability is the ranking officer's."

It was true, she knew, but it didn't make her any happier about being kept out of the process.

And now she is hardly in his daily life. Because their electronic communications may be monitored, their comm and computer messages have become formal and almost empty of content.

Until her experiment with code.

 _Student assessments are completed and ready to pick up at 1300 during your lunch break_ , she wrote earlier in the week, hoping he would recognize her invitation to meet.

When he walked into the market deli exactly on time, she congratulated herself.

"I'm glad you got my message," she said, watching his face intently. Anyone looking at them—Vijay, for instance, pushing a broom up and down the aisles—would see two professionals eating an indifferent meal together.

"This is unwise," Spock said, and Nyota felt a medley of emotions: anger, of course, not just at his words but at the situation that made eating a simple sandwich an occasion fraught with tension, and sorrow, and finally resignation. Of course he was right. Once this all blew over, they could resume.

It _would_ blow over. She comforted herself with the idea, envisioned herself on the other side of the hearing, the way she had been taught to prepare for success.

"Imagine yourself winning the competition," her track coach had told her when her confidence faltered after a disastrous meet where she had turned her ankle, pulling down jeers from an unsympathetic crowd of spectators.

"Look at the stands," the coach suggested, "at the people who doubted you. See them in your mind. Now put yourself there, crossing the finish line first. Throw your arms up in the air and let everyone know that you have conquered this event. And more. You've conquered your fear."

And she had. While she didn't always come in first, she always placed. If she hadn't been headed to Starfleet, she could have competed in the pan-African Olympics her senior year, she was that talented an athlete.

_It has to end well. If she is responsible for his being drummed out of the service—_

The idea wakes her at night, has almost driven her to confide in Gaila, who looks at her these days with a mixture of pity and concern.

 _If he leaves…_ she refuses to consider that possibility _. He can't. He won't._

Professor Artura shifts in his seat slightly and says, "Then perhaps I should share something with you."

At once Nyota feels her heart speed up. Her throat and lips are too dry to speak.

"This morning I was visited by an officer from JAG," the professor says, his antennae bent toward her. "About the Commander. And you."

The visit isn't a surprise—Spock had warned her that the Judge Advocate General's office would take depositions from his colleagues and former students—and possibly even from his family. Part of the reason she wants to talk to Spock is to rehearse what she should say when the JAG officers come to her—which they certainly will.

"The rules of fraternization leave some room for interpretation," Spock had told her, his voice as dry and inflectionless as if he had been discussing a topic in his classroom. "Article 73 states that for a relationship to cross the line into fraternization, it must somehow advantage the junior party or show favoritism. Since our relationship began after you were no longer my student, technically I could not offer you academic advantages. Then the issue of coercion is addressed in Article 74. The JAG officer may ask you if you felt you had no choice except to enter into this relationship."

Despite the seriousness of the discussion—or perhaps because of it—she smiled and said, "If I believed in destiny I might say I didn't have a choice."

Then a somber look clouded her features and she added, "But I went into this with my eyes open. I chose it."

"Nevertheless," Spock said, "that may not be your best defense."

But what defense does either of them have, really? If anyone asks them directly to confess their guilt, each is prepared to do so—without diversion, without dishonesty.

If, on the other hand, Starfleet dodges the question or looks the other way—

That would be a gift, surely, and one they do not feel guilty accepting. Their relationship—whatever it is and however they define it—hurts nothing, causes no one harm. It is, in essence, their own business, and when they do have time to talk frankly with each other these days, this topic is one they revisit.

It was only a matter of time before someone from JAG would talk to Professor Artura. Nyota squirms, thinking of the innuendoes the Andorian is so fond of making.

"And?" she prompts him now, and he tilts his head and blinks several times before answering.

"I told them what I know," he says, and Nyota starts to protest. _He doesn't know anything for certain._ She and Spock have never been outwardly affectionate with each other in Professor Artura's presence, have never been overheard in intimate conversation.

There was that _one_ time when the office door was shut—

But Professor Artura had not seen them then, even if he suspected something was going on.

"I told them," the Andorian says, tilting his head in the other direction, "that the Commander is a brilliant researcher and a gifted teacher, and that your contributions to the lab tutorial program have been incalculable. That you are both professionals I am honored to know. That your many kindnesses to me have made this year a most pleasant one, and I am delighted that you will be my new teaching assistant next year."

The professor's praise is so heart-felt, so sincere, so freely given and generous that Nyota feels her eyes misting up. For all his teasing and hinting and implying, when it matters most, Professor Artura has proven himself a friend.

For a moment she cannot speak, and then she says a quiet _thank you_.

"Commander Spock?"

The voice at the door makes them both swivel around.

"He's not here," Nyota says.

The middle-aged man at the door is short and tousled and wearing civilian clothing. Not someone from JAG, then. An Academy visitor? Sometimes researchers come to collaborate, though Spock has mentioned nothing to her about expecting anyone.

"But this is his office?"

"He's at Riverside Shipyard today," Nyota says as Professor Artura stands up and makes his way slowly to the door. The civilian steps aside and nods as the Andorian shuffles past him into the hall.

"And you must be Cadet Uhura?"

Hearing her name flusters her. A civilian would have no reason to know it. She looks again at the unprepossessing man with his untrimmed hair and shapeless jacket.

"I am," she says, more than a little annoyed. "And you are?"

"Samuel T. Cogley," the man says, stepping forward more sprightly than she would have anticipated, holding his hand out to shake. She does so reluctantly and he takes this as an invitation to sit in the seat Professor Artura just vacated.

"When do you expect him back?"

 _A sore spot_ —she doesn't know, isn't even sure that he is still at the shipyard. He had mentioned the probability in passing when they spoke last, though nothing was certain.

Intellectually she understands Spock's distance, his quietude when they do spend time together.

But it hurts her feelings nonetheless. If anything, they should be a source of comfort to each other now that…

She doesn't finish the thought. Samuel T. Cogley is looking at her curiously.

"How long have you been the Commander's assistant?"

Although his words sound overly familiar, even intrusive, his tone is so matter-of-fact that Nyota feels compelled to answer him. A statement—that's all he's asking for.

"Since the beginning of the school year," she says, and Cogley taps the first two fingers of his right hand on his chin and says, "Nine months, almost ten. That might be the record."

"Pardon me?"

"For the Commander. I understand he isn't easy to work for. Most of his other aides washed out in a few months. Or even weeks."

"Excuse me, but I don't think—"

"I'm a lawyer, Miss Uhura. I've been asked to represent the Commander in the upcoming hearing."

"But he said he wasn't—"

"I don't work for Starfleet. I usually hang my shingle on Starbase 11, but an old friend asked me to offer my services, seeing as how the Commander waived his right to appointed counsel."

Cogley cocks his head to the side and says, almost as an aside, "Probably not the smartest thing to do…."

Nyota realizes with a start that her mouth is open and she shuts it abruptly. The wiry man sitting beside her looks more like an absent-minded professor than a litigator. As if he senses her thoughts, Cogley catches her eye and smiles.

"Don't let appearances fool you," he laughs. "I'm not some crackpot. And I really do have the Commander's best interests at heart."

"Who—"

"—asked me to come here?"

Nyota nods, and Cogley purses his lips.

"That I'm not at liberty to say. I won't be able to stay, either, unless the Commander agrees to it. If he says no, I have a slot on a return flight tomorrow."

Her mind is a whirlwind. Ever since Spock told her that he was turning down his right to counsel, a feeling of foreboding and doom have weighed on her like a huge stone on her chest. Now here is a lawyer who might be able to help.

Suddenly she is less alone than she has been in three weeks.

"No, please," she says quickly, "don't leave until he gets back. I expect him shortly."

"But you aren't sure? About when, I mean," he adds.

Shaking her head, she watches as Cogley reaches inside his pocket and pulls out an old-fashioned palm-sized notebook, one made from real paper and bound with a hard cover. Reaching back into his pocket, he pulls out a second object, a ballpoint pen, the kind Nyota has held only once or twice.

"Riverside Shipyard, you said?"

Cogley bends back the cover of the small notebook and holds his pen above the page, waiting. With a start, Nyota says, "Yes. At least, he was there yesterday. I think he stayed over."

"But you aren't sure."

"No."

"And he hasn't contacted you today to tell you his whereabouts."

"No," she sighs.

"Good," Cogley says. "If he does, keep it short. No use giving them any ammunition."

With that, Cogley scribbles something on the page and tucks his notebook back into his pocket. When he stands up, Nyota does, too.

"Mr. Cogley," she says, suddenly unsure how to ask what she has to know. _What she wants is not so much information as reassurance_ —and that, she realizes, no one can give.

"If the Commander admits to a relationship—" she says hesitantly.

"—is he finished? Is that what you're asking?"

Suddenly she can't speak, as if a tourniquet is squeezing her throat. She nods mutely.

Samuel Cogley stands up straighter, as if appraising her. As she watches, he tilts his head slowly and puts his hands behind his back, his posture and attitude so much like Spock in professor mode that she almost smiles.

"I won't lie," he says at last. "If the two of you are in intimate congress—"

Here he holds out his hand, palm upward, to stop her from speaking.

"—it will not be looked on kindly. However, it may not rise to the level of an infraction serious enough to end anyone's career. There is some wiggle room in the way the board may see things."

Lowering his hand and turning toward the door, Cogley adds, "At least, I hope so."

He walks on into the hall and for a moment Nyota stares after him, unmoving. With a jerk, she steps quickly to the doorway and calls, "If the Commander comes in, where can he find you?"

Without looking back, Cogley says over his shoulder, "I'll find him."

"But," Nyota says, feeling a flutter of panic as the lawyer reaches the landing to the stairs, "where are you going?"

At that he pauses long enough to look back.

"To the shipyard, of course."

X X X X X X X

As he rounds the corner, Spock sees the civilian at the far end of the transport terminal. He's not the only civilian here in the shipyard facility, but he's the only one Spock has not seen before.

At once he is wary. Not likely a security breach—two security officers are standing within 20 meters of the man. Nor is he a contractor or a visiting dignitary. Spock has met most of the contractors who have occasion to visit the _Enterprise_ ; and dignitaries are usually in groups and wear a far more distinguished style of clothing.

The man is turned slightly away watching a shift change as Spock makes his way across the tarmac. Clearly the stranger is scanning the crowd, looking for someone.

No ordinary civilian would have been granted access to the yard without intervention from the brass.

And here, at the site where the _Enterprise_ is being assembled, that brass is Captain Pike.

Why would Captain Pike allow a civilian on the yard right now? A coincidence that Spock's hearing is two days away? Unlikely. The civilian is here to see Spock.

A lawyer, then.

Calling Spock to his office two weeks ago, Captain Pike had waited for him to take a seat before shoving a piece of paper across his desk.

"This came today," he said abruptly. How curious. The captain's words were innocuous enough, but his tone of voice indicated anger.

Glancing down, Spock saw that the paper was a list of questions for a deposition from the JAG office.

"What damn fool thing is this?"

Was the captain serious? Spock couldn't tell. Surely Captain Pike understood what a routine deposition was, had been notified about Spock's upcoming disciplinary hearing.

"This is, I believe," Spock began, "the initial list of questions—"

"I know what it is. What I want to know is why."

Again Spock was flummoxed. The charges were displayed across the top of the paper.

"I have been charged with violating the anti-fraternization code of conduct—"

"Dammit, Spock," the captain said, running his hand through his short graying hair, "I know what the accusation is. And I'm not asking you if you are guilty or not. Frankly, I don't care."

The captain exhaled loudly and fingered the pull on the bottom drawer on his desk.

"All I care about is whether or not I'm going to have to find another first officer to help me launch this bird."

Because this is not a question per se, Spock says nothing. Within 4.3 seconds he realizes his silence is a mistake.

"So? What's going to happen here? Do I need to start interviewing officers again?" Captain Pike says so irritably that Spock has no doubt as to his mood.

"Uncertain," he says, careful to respond this time, but to his surprise he draws Captain Pike's fire again.

"You can't tell me," the captain says, placing his hands flat on the top of his desk, "anything. You have no idea why this charge is coming to light now. Why, or who, has lodged a complaint against you—or whispered their suspicions to the higher ups. You can't tell me anything."

Finally the captain seems to understand the situation. With a measure of relief, Spock says, "That is correct."

Immediately Captain Pike explodes into a string of imprecations, some so garbled, others undoubtedly of some unusual, unfamiliar vernacular, that Spock almost flinches.

When the captain finally falls silent—more than two minutes later—Spock waits to be dismissed and is surprised when Pike says, "Please tell me that you don't have any of these answers because your counsel has been so busy that he or she hasn't had time to share this with you—"

"I have no counsel."

Captain Pike stopped fidgeting and let his chair tip forward, his feet slamming the floor.

"You haven't met your counsel yet?"

"I have none. I waived my right to counsel."

For a moment Spock was afraid that this revelation would set off another bout of furious yelling, but the captain simply dipped his head and looked at Spock squarely.

Finally he said, "I see. And why is that? You have a right to counsel."

Spock's answer was quick and sure. Indeed, it was also practiced—the same answer he had already been forced to give his cousin Chris and his father when they asked the same question.

"I did not think it necessary."

Again Captain Pike let the fingers of his left hand drift to the drawer pull.

"We'll speak later," he said at last, and Spock understood that he was dismissed.

Despite the captain's comment, they have not spoken again about the hearing—not about his counsel or about the charges or the deposition. After all, Spock reasons, the captain has much more important things to occupy his time. The specs on the frontal sensory array came in more than a centimeter off and the entire baffle plate had to be disassembled and remachined—causing the loss of four days' progress.

Such snafus are inevitable in a large undertaking. Being irritated about them…or feeling guilt about not being more available to oversee the construction…is illogical. Still—

The civilian standing near the shuttle terminal looks up and makes eye contact with Spock. Walking towards him, the man intercepts Spock quickly.

"Commander Spock?"

"Affirmative."

"Samuel T. Cogley. May I walk with you?"

Like so many things that humans say, this comment does not require a response. After all, permission to walk is not Spock's to grant or deny. He moves forward toward the row of shuttles being serviced outside the hangar deck.

"If you don't mind," the civilian says, breathing hard, "I want to speak to you before you head back to San Francisco."

"Mr. Cogley," Spock says, stopping in his tracks and turning to face him, "I do not need a lawyer. If I had wanted one, I would have accepted the counsel offered by Starfleet."

He turns back to the row of shuttles and prepares to make his way to the one at the far end.

"Then perhaps you will accept some advice," Cogley says. "It won't cost you a thing."

Two construction workers sidle past, and behind them, Spock can see a larger group heading this way, most on their way to the departing shuttles. The first of the shift change—with many more to come. Spock beats back the prickle of annoyance and says, "The canteen might afford more privacy."

"Certainly," Cogley says, nodding. "I promise I won't keep you long."

That remains to be seen. Already Spock is behind schedule. Giving up the shuttle means a two-hour wait until the next one leaves for San Francisco. Shifting his hand in his jacket pocket, he fingers his comm and takes a breath. He had planned to call Nyota on the trip back—perhaps even suggest that they see each other tonight. He thinks of the last time they spoke two days ago. Her unhappiness with him—with his self-imposed exile—has left him unsettled. If he can see her—touch her—he is sure he will regain some sense of balance.

If he goes to the hearing in two days without it—

The canteen is usually a crowded spot in any shipyard, this one included, except after a shift change. Departing workers might stop in to purchase a drink or some small snack, but they don't linger long.

Today is no exception. When Spock and Cogley enter the canteen, Spock sees two workers at the counter paying for bottled beverages. No one is sitting at the assorted tables and chairs strewn around the room. Leading the way to the corner furthest from the door, Spock motions for Cogley to take a seat and he follows, sliding into a chair on the other side of a small, square, white polystyrene table that jiggles at his touch.

For a moment neither man speaks.

"Look," Cogley says, "I know you think you don't need counsel, and maybe you don't—"

He holds up his hand to stop Spock from answering.

"Please," he says, "just hear me out. You need to think through all the possibilities before you head into the hearing."

Spock's equanimity almost leaves him then. Of course he has thought about all the possibilities. He has thought about almost nothing else in the past three weeks. He starts to stand.

"I'm not trying to offend you," Cogley says, and Spock feels another wave of irritation—this time that his emotions have been so transparent. He sits back down and unclenches his fists.

"For instance," the lawyer says, "you need to consider the motives of the person who accused you."

"I do not know who accused me."

Spock sees Cogley's eyebrows rise and his eyes widen. Surprise, then.

"JAG hasn't disclosed the discovery documents to you?"

"I did not ask for them."

"But," Cogley says, "let's imagine that the person who brought charges is a former student, someone who failed one of your classes. His testimony is suspect given his past history with you."

"If he failed my class, it was because his performance was sub-par."

Cogley makes a little wave with his hand—a dismissive motion Spock has seen his mother make from time to time.

"From your point of view, he deserved to fail. But from his point of view, you were too hard, or unfair, or you failed him because you didn't like him for some reason."

"I would not do that."

"Just follow me here. I said from _his_ point of view. From a human point of view."

"Then he would be in error."

Shifting in his chair, Cogley says, "Commander, have any students ever failed one of your classes?"

"Many."

"And how many of them—approximately—were rational, reasonable, unemotional human beings? None, right? Because such an animal hardly exists."

A chiming noise signals the beginning of the next shift and Spock notes a worker scurrying down the hallway past the canteen.

"Your point being?"

"My point being that humans don't always act logically. Their motives are sometimes greed, or anger, or any number of things. Once you know who your accuser is, you will have a key to how to defend yourself."

Without being able to articulate why, Spock feels a sense of unease as Cogley speaks. On one hand, what he says rings true. Humans are often motivated to act irrationally. On the other hand, whoever accused him isn't wrong. He debates saying as much to Cogley. Before he can, the lawyer continues.

"The disciplinary board is going to be on your side in this," he says, "unless you give them a reason not to be. The hero of Leiden—"

"I am not a hero. I did what was necessary."

As he has many times since the Feynman Conference, Spock replays the scene in his mind—the almost unthinking decision to pick up the sonic grenade and exit the crowded room, looking for a safe place for detonation. The sorrow he had felt about his own impending death had not stayed his hand or slowed his progress, had not even figured into his actions.

Any Starfleet officer would have acted the same. Labeling him as something different is offensive, not just to him but to the service. He feels his face flush.

"Nevertheless," Cogley says smoothly, "the board knows about your actions and will be predisposed to see you in that light. On the other hand—"

Cogley pauses and taps his fingers on the table, shaking it.

"This new group of anti-alien protesters can factor in, too."

At this, Spock is genuinely surprised—and skeptical. He says as much.

"They were behind the bombing," Cogley says, "and they've been a nuisance in lots of other places. Probably here as well."

Spock recalls the crowds outside the west gate the night his mother had stayed with him for her radiation treatment, thinks about the words they yelled at him, their jeers for him to go home.

As if home would be more welcoming. Vulcans are less vocal about their prejudices, perhaps, but he knows better than to think their silence signals their acceptance.

"I fail to see how the protesters will impact what happens in my hearing," he says. Cogley raises his eyebrows again.

"You don't? All those good board members will be so careful to prove that they are fair-minded, that they don't share that same anti-alien mentality—"

This time Spock doesn't try to tamp down his anger.

"If you are suggesting that I would benefit from their fear of being perceived as sympathetic to Earth United—"

"Whoa, whoa!" Cogley said, putting both hands up this time. "I'm not making a judgment about it. I'm not saying you should like it. I'm just telling you how it might be. If you want to be prepared for every possibility, that is."

Struggling to steady his breathing, Spock listens. A foolish break in his composure—and one that does not bode well for the hearing itself.

With a pang, he thinks again of Nyota. If only he could see her tonight, tell her about this disturbing conversation with this lawyer. Sharing his disquiet would halve it—would lessen it, knowing that she understood what he was _feeling_.

"Mr. Cogley," he says, "I do not believe that you have anything further I need to hear. If you will excuse me—"

"Fine, I understand," Cogley says, watching Spock from the corner of his eye, "but do you mind telling me how you are going to respond to the charges?"

Until he hears himself say it, Spock isn't completely sure how he will plead—his uncertainty not at all characteristic for him. Cogley's questions have helped him decide.

"I will tender my resignation."

"Then you will plead guilty of fraternization."

"I will not plead. I will resign instead."

"Even though the evidence may not indicate fraternization."

Suddenly Spock is weary of talking. The lawyer, on the other hand, seems unusually energized.

"I understand the articles that govern fraternization," Spock says as flatly as he can.

"Then you are admitting that Cadet Uhura did not earn her marks fairly in your classes—that you inflated her grades."

An image flashes through Spock's mind like lightning—of reaching across the table and squeezing Samuel T. Cogley's neck so hard that he feels the soft bones of his spine crunch. Spock's breathing is forced, his heart beating so hard that he doesn't try to speak.

"See, if you resign, that's what the board will conclude."

Cogley continues to watch him, less cautiously than he should, Spock thinks. The image of his hand around Cogley's neck fades slowly.

"Or," Cogley says, "they will think that she beat out the competition for the assistantship because you showed favoritism."

Again the horrifying flashpoint, the uncontrollable fury.

When he can breathe again, he says, slowly and softly, "That conclusion is incorrect. Further, it impugns the cadet's merits and abilities which her other professors have noted. Her record will speak for itself."

But will it? Now that Cogley has brought up the idea of a board moved by emotion, swayed by the motivations of witnesses, Spock's assurance is shaken.

"Commander," the lawyer says, calling back his attention, "I'm not trying to tell you what to do or how to plead. It's your decision. But I want you to consider that what you do and how you plead affects more than your future. Let's say you do leave the service. You have lots of other options, but what about Cadet Uhura? Her reputation will suffer, as will her career if she wants to stay in Starfleet. Give that some thought when you face the board."

Cogley stands up then, the squeal of his chair on the tile floor making a grating noise that is almost painful.

"I'll be around tomorrow if you need me," Cogley says. "Here's how you can reach me."

Pulling out his notebook and pen, he jots down some numbers and tears out a sheet of paper, proffering it to Spock.

All the way back to San Francisco, Spock fingers it like a talisman.

When Nyota unbuttons his jacket and slips it off his shoulders that night, she runs her hands into the pocket and pulls out the slip of paper.

"What's this?" she asks, letting the jacket drop to the floor of his bedroom as they undress each other, the heat in his apartment so high that she complains—something she rarely does. Leaning down to pick up his jacket and hang it in the closet, Spock hears her laugh at his obsessive neatness, the first time she has since he called her from the shuttle terminal, asking her to meet him at his apartment.

"Nothing of consequence," he says, turning back to her and sliding his hands along the side of her face and down her neck and shoulders. Having her here is the only thing that keeps him from flying apart. A calculated risk—especially now, when the hearing is two days away—when a routine surveillance tape of the faculty building will prove that she is here in what humans consider the middle of the night.

But meditation has proved fruitless, and music and poetry worthless as comforts. Only her flesh and blood and her mind and personality are enough to steady him. He makes no apologies for that.

The last three weeks have been an unnecessary desert. He resolves not to wander in it again.

From the corner of his eye he sees the slip of paper drift from her hand, landing on the floor. The desire to pick it up flees as she steps into his arms.

He needs her more than he needs the paper, more than he needs to keep his world orderly, predictable. Her insistence that she will be at the hearing, for instance. He doesn't want her there—and he does, too. His ambivalence astonishes him.

Her equal insistence that she will stay all night—they may have to renegotiate that. He's seen her when she has made up her mind—knows the futility of arguing with her when she's completely committed to a course of action.

He may walk her back to her dorm in an hour.

Or he may not.

His ambivalence about this astonishes him as well.

He tries to imagine the rest of the evening—or more—without her and the loneliness is almost more than he can bear.

X X X X X X X

The shuttle flight back from the Riverside Shipyard is a metaphorical hop, skip, and jump to Starfleet Headquarters in San Francisco, but Samuel T. Cogley grips the armrest of his seat the entire 15 minutes. Flight of any kind is unnatural—at least for an earthbound human being. No matter that he lives most of the time on Starbase 11, a dozen parsecs _thataway_. Gravity is gravity, no matter where he is. He likes it, wants to feel connected to solid ground. Anything else is dicey.

Which isn't to say that he doesn't understand why others might want to travel in space. When he had first arrived in Iowa, he had taken a hover bus from the shuttle terminal out to the shipyard. As the bus neared the construction site, Cogley eyed the _Enterprise_ with something akin to awe. The massive ship was still skeletal in places but assembled enough that even someone as unfamiliar with spacecraft as he could discern how the lines and angles fit together in an aesthetic paradoxically sleek and powerful.

It hadn't been hard to find the Vulcan Commander. Even from a distance, Cogley recognized the alien stiffness in his posture, as if he was accustomed to fighting the pull of a stronger gravity.

At first the Commander openly rebuffed his overtures to talk, moving so quickly away that Cogley had to jog to keep up. His heart begun to pound and he felt his breath coming in short bursts.

"If you don't mind," he said, trying to get the Commander to stop or slow down, "I want to speak to you before you head back to San Francisco."

At this the Commander finally stopped and turned to him. His eyes were dark and opaque and Cogley felt a shiver of unease. Usually he's quite astute at reading people. It's essential in the courtroom—indeed, before even getting there. A lawyer with no intuition about people would get rooked by clients unwilling to tell the truth.

That the Commander had not accepted counsel was almost as shocking as his clever deduction about Cogley himself. Unless, of course, he was tipped off. That, however, seemed unlikely.

Within a few minutes, Cogley was sure the Commander was going to refuse his help, considered throwing up his hands—literally and metaphorically—and catching the nearest transport home.

Both men stood tethered together in a sea of shift workers moving around them, and then something flickered across the Commander's face.

"The canteen might afford more privacy."

The Commander's excessive caution was not a surprise. After all, this wasn't the first time Cogley had seen good officers compromised this way. And for the same reason. Stupid Starfleet regulations, flying in the face of common sense.

He considered saying as much but was intimidated by Spock's presence. No wonder the scuttlebutt painted him as an imposing professor, demanding and hard to please.

"Look," Cogley said, "I know you think you don't need counsel, and maybe you don't—"

The Commander leaned forward fractionally and took a breath, obviously preparing to protest.

Cogley made the same hand-stop motion he had made earlier to quiet Cadet Uhura.

"Please," he said, "just hear me out. You need to think through all the possibilities before you head into the hearing."

As soon as he said it, Cogley realized his error. Of course a Vulcan would have run all the possibilities through that incredible brain of his. This wasn't some ordinary human riding the usual roller coaster of guilt and shame. Suggesting he needed to think harder about anything was nothing short of foolish.

The rest of the conversation went downhill from there.

Well, he can't say he wasn't warned.

"He'll drive you to drink," Christopher Pike had told him when he picked up the ID and pass and announced his intention to offer his services. "He'll look you right in the eye and convince you that you two are speaking different languages. But be my guest. Give it a whirl."

Not until he had mentioned the actual plea had Spock seemed to take him seriously.

"Mr. Cogley," Spock said in obvious dismissal, "I do not believe that you have anything further I need to hear. If you will excuse me—"

"Fine, I understand," Cogley replied, watching Spock from the corner of his eye, "but do you mind telling me how you are going to respond to the charges?"

"I will tender my resignation."

"Then you will plead guilty of fraternization."

"I will not plead. I will resign instead."

"Even though the evidence may not indicate fraternization?"

"I understand the articles that govern fraternization."

"Then you are admitting that Cadet Uhura did not earn her marks fairly in your classes—that you inflated her grades."

As he had expected, Cogley saw Spock react immediately. What he had not expected was that his reaction would be so emotional. The Vulcan was angry—no, _furious_ —and Cogley had a pang of regret for putting him through this.

Better now, however, than to be caught broadside at the hearing. Cogley draped one arm over the back of his rickety chair and aped an insouciance he didn't feel.

"See, if you resign, that's what the board will conclude."

Watching the Commander struggle to control himself was almost painful. His breathing, his high color, were giveaways to his inner turmoil.

"Or," Cogley said, "they will think that she beat out the competition for the assistantship because you showed favoritism."

Again the look of undisguised fury. Without consciously intending to, Cogley leaned away out of the Commander's reach.

The best he could do was make sure the Commander had a way to contact him if he changed his mind, but on the shuttle ride back to San Francisco, Cogley mulls over the odds that he will hear from him again. Not likely. Not likely at all.

"Well?"

Natalie Jolsen waves Cogley into her office at the Embarcadero and says again, "Well? Any luck?"

"What do you think?" he says, frustration making his voice hoarse.

"That's not what I want to hear," she says, frowning and tucking a strand of her short bob behind one ear.

"It's not what I want to say," Cogley says, dropping into a chair facing Natalie's desk. "You told me he'd be stubborn—"

"So you should have been prepared."

"You didn't tell me he'd be impossible!"

Natalie snorts and shakes her head. Her motion catches his attention and Cogley notices how tired she is, how dark circles under her eyes shadow her face and make her look drawn and irritable.

"I gave him my contact information," Cogley says, hoping to lighten Natalie's mood, but she glares at him instead.

"He's going to go under, isn't he?" she says suddenly, and Cogley considers before answering.

"Possibly. Probably. He's not even trying to fight the charges. Right now he says he's going to resign at the hearing."

Because he is watching her so closely, Cogley sees Natalie's face flush and her nostrils flare. She's clearly angry, but not at Spock.

"And you didn't talk him out of that!"

"I told you, he wouldn't be moved!"

Natalie snorts again, this time louder.

"Anyone can be moved if you have the right lever. What about his assistant? Did you tell him what will happen to her?"

"Yep," Cogley says, crossing his arms. "I got his attention then, but I can't say it changed anything. Are you positive they've—"

Instead of answering, Natalie gives him yet another evil look.

"What kind of proof do you need? A hidden camera in the bedroom?"

Her voice is uncharacteristically bitter and Cogley is taken aback. He's known Natalie for a long time—since she and Chris served together on the _Yorktown_. For two months they had been at the repair station on Starbase 11 while a computer upgrade was installed—and all three had spent a far amount of time in one of the two bars on the base.

"If he would name me as his counsel, I could get access to the records and see what kind of proof they have."

"Then you should have insisted!"

Natalie's distress is so acute that Cogley sits back and regards her. He's never seen her quite this way, not even when she and Chris had their own little brush with a fraternization charge. Perhaps that memory is what is making her so antsy—or at least, contributing to her angst.

Something else has to be going on as well.

"Nat," Cogley says, using the nickname he's only heard Chris use with her, "why this guy? Why all the concern about one Vulcan who's proving to be a pain in the ass? Is he really that good?"

Something in Natalie deflates then, like a balloon losing all its air. She sighs and tips her face up to the ceiling before straightening up and letting out a long breath.

"I don't know. I can't explain it. It's just….a feeling…I have. Spock is so different from Chris—he drives us both crazy—but there's something about that difference that makes me feel…safe…about leaving him on the ship. He's going to take care of it. I just know it."

"And take care of Chris?"

At that Natalie darts a glance at Cogley before nodding.

"And Chris. If I can't be there, I want someone who'll keep an eye out for him."

For a few moments neither says anything. The silence in the room is punctuated by the regular shake and hum of a malfunctioning cooling system. Someone walks down the hall, the tattoo of footsteps echoing on the tile.

"Look," Cogley says at last, "I was supposed to head home tomorrow, but if you want, I'll stick around until the hearing. Get me clearance and I'll register as a possible counsel. If the Commander changes his mind—well, I'll be there. I can be sworn in without prior notification. It's allowed in these hearings."

For a moment Natalie is silent and Cogley lets his eye drift around the office. It is spartan by any measure—an almost featureless room with nothing personal to indicate its owner. Nothing else speaks as clearly of Natalie's decision to leave Starfleet as this empty office. If she once had other ideas, those were put away long ago.

"Okay," she says, finally. "I'll get you in. If nothing else, he might let you sit as an advisor. Maybe seeing you there will keep him straight."

Not seeing _me_ there, Cogley thinks as he stands to leave. He replays the image of Spock almost rising from his chair in anger, Cogley's words about favoritism barely out of his mouth.

If the assistant is there—sitting in the gallery, perhaps, or slotted to testify—the Commander might not let everything fall apart.

Might not.

Once again Cogley marvels at what he has learned about this particular Vulcan, how close to the surface his emotions are. Are all Vulcans this way? He doesn't think so, yet what he knows about Vulcans in general hasn't been enough to help him today.

He needs to remedy that deficit in his understanding.

But later, after he takes Natalie out for a drink, for old time's sake.

**A/N: Fans of TOS will recognize Samuel T. Cogley from "Court Martial," when he defended Kirk from charges of negligence.  
**


	13. The Hearing

**Disclaimer: No one belongs to me, not even the characters I made up. They demanded their freedom almost from the first keystroke…**

She wakes with a start.

"Lights!" she calls out, flooding the room instantly. From the other bed, Gaila says something indistinguishable into her pillow and covers her head.

Her heart fluttering, Nyota peers at the clock on the bedside table. 0417. That can't be right. Feeling around on the top of the table for her wrist chronometer, she scoops it up and holds it close to her face. 0418.

_Oh._

"Lights off," she says, settling back into her bed.

A muffled " _thank you_ " comes from Gaila's pillow.

This is the second time Nyota has drifted off to sleep tonight, only to wake in a panic. Spock's hearing is scheduled for 0900 at the main administration building at HQ, a short bus ride from the Academy. The early morning buses are always crowded, sometimes so much so that getting one takes more effort and time than expected. At some level, Nyota realizes that that her anxiety about missing the bus is a gift, keeping her from worrying about far weightier things.

Like whether or not she will be called to testify. Samuel Cogley told her that she probably won't be.

"The hearing will mostly be the board members asking for responses to issues raised in the depositions," Cogley said. "If we are lucky, I'll be able to do all the talking and the board will dismiss the charges outright. Nothing I've seen so far suggests they have anything other than innuendo or rumors. Worst case scenario, they ask the Commander directly about your relationship. How likely is he to tell the truth if that happens?"

She didn't hesitate.

"Very."

"That's unfortunate," Cogley said. "Not surprising, though. Damned Vulcans."

He sighed loudly then and added, "But if he does, you will be asked if you benefited in an inappropriate way—or conversely, whether or not you felt you were coerced into it."

None of this was news to Nyota—Spock had already explained the Starfleet Articles that delineated where a relationship strayed into fraternization. She felt her face grow hot with anger.

At least Spock is allowing Cogley to represent him at the hearing. Nyota isn't sure what changed his mind.

"Better to be forewarned," was all he had said to her when he told her that Cogley was spending yesterday going over the depositions in detail, something he was allowed to do as Spock's counsel.

She doesn't know what he found—she hasn't had a private moment with Spock in the past two days, and they have kept their communication by computer and comm to a minimum—or in a code they have cobbled together.

 _Close the lab tomorrow_ , he said in a comm text late last night, and she knew he was finally answering whether or not he wanted her at the hearing. He did.

When her alarm clock goes off at 0700 she is startled again—this time because she had been sure she would not be able to sleep at all, yet she obviously has drifted off. Glancing across the room, she sees that Gaila is already up. The soft hiss of the shower tells her where she is.

That's unusual. Gaila's circadian rhythm has always been out of sync with Nyota's—partly because she is an Orion and hails from a world with a 29 hour solar day, but also because she particularly enjoys the activities that happen after dark—and can, if pressed, skip an entire rest period without too much wear and tear.

In a few moments the shower cuts off and Gaila emerges, draped in one of Nyota's bathrobes and toweling her red curls dry.

"I'll be ready to go by the time you are," she says, and Nyota pauses from gathering up her clothes and says, "What are you talking about?"

"The hearing? I'm going with you."

Nyota has said nothing to Gaila about the hearing. Indeed, she has never said anything directly to her about her feelings for Spock, much less anything about their relationship.

She's always suspected that Gaila knows—the meaningful looks, the wayward comments—but she's never felt she could be honest with her.

Not that Gaila isn't trustworthy, and not that Nyota wouldn't have felt great relief in having a confidant these past few months.

But doing so would have been a betrayal of the secrecy she and Spock have committed to. Telling anyone—even her mother, who nags her frequently about making time to come home for a visit, who recently complained that Nyota has forgotten her allegiance to her family—would be a violation of the unspoken covenant the two of them share.

"The hearing?"

"I'm not stupid, Ny," Gaila says, leaning to the side and sandwiching her long hair between two folds of the towel and squeezing out the dripping water. "When the JAG officer met me outside the programming lab last week with a list of questions about the Commander, I figured out what was up."

Despair and relief rush through her in equal measure.

"You were…asked to give a deposition?"

Gaila doesn't answer but nods, tipping her head forward and letting her hair fall in front of her face.

"Did you—"

"Did I say anything about you?" Gaila says, standing back up and running her fingers into her hair to separate the springy curls. "The JAG officer asked me if I had seen you and the Commander together, and I said that I had, loads of times, and then he asked if you were ever inappropriate with each other, and I made him define _inappropriate_ —and the JAG officer said inappropriate meant having an emotional overtone to the relationship, and I said that humans seemed to have emotional overtones about everything, and he started to get irritated with me then and I said, _see, you have an inappropriate emotional overtone towards me right now_ , and he said he meant _sexual_ , and I said that asking an Orion if a sexual overtone was inappropriate was ridiculous, and he said thank you very much and he left."

Nyota sits on the side of her bed and considers. On one hand, Gaila has said nothing specific. On the other hand, her non-denial denial is almost worse.

"Did I say something wrong?" Gaila asks, letting her towel drop to the floor and stepping over it to stand in front of Nyota.

Nyota looks up at her roommate and gives a rueful smile.

"No," she says, "but it would have been better if you had just said that you didn't know anything—that you've never seen any…inappropriate behavior."

"I couldn't do that," Gaila answers immediately, and Nyota darts her a glance. "You and the Commander broadcast all the time how you feel and what you are doing."

_A flash of alarm. Broadcast?_

"I mean," Gaila amends, "an Orion can tell. You have a particular aroma when you see the Commander. It's very erotic."

Nyota feels her face flush and her hands fly to her cheeks.

"And when you have been intimate—"

"Don't say anything else, please," Nyota says, and Gaila grins.

"His pheromones are even easier to detect than yours," she says. "Must be that combination of Vulcan and human—"

At that, Nyota flees to the shower, standing under it longer than usual.

When she comes back out, she's gratified that Gaila is dressed in her formal uniform, sitting primly on the one chair in the room. So she's really going to go with her to the hearing. A relief to know that she will have a friendly face there, especially if things go badly.

"Thank you," she says simply, trusting that Gaila knows the depth of her gratitude—not just for being her friend now, but for keeping her silence all along.

Neither woman wants breakfast. They head instead to the nearest bus shelter. Already the queue is long, mostly with cadets rushing to early classes but also with some maintenance crew, professors, and the odd civilian visitor or two.

"Let's walk on to the next stop," Nyota suggests and Gaila shrugs. She's game—and Nyota feels another wave of gratitude for her presence this morning.

Ordinarily the stops further down the line are less crowded, but this morning is the exception. Seeing a queue even longer than the first, Nyota has a flush of panic. 0817 by her wrist chronometer. The bus isn't scheduled for another five minutes, and if it is even halfway full when it gets here, the line of people waiting will overfill it. She and Gaila may not get a ride on this one either.

From her side she senses Gaila watching her closely. Suddenly the Orion pulls her by the arm and force marches her to the head of the queue.

"Excuse me," Gaila says sweetly to a young male cadet reading his comm messages. "Is this the line for bus 23?"

"Yeah," he says, barely glancing up.

"Is it late today?" Gaila says, leaning forward a fraction. The cadet takes a longer look at Gaila and slips his comm into his pocket.

"I don't…think so."

"You ride bus 23 a lot?"

"Yeah," the cadet says, his eyes becoming distinctly unfocused as Gaila leans closer.

"To class? Or do you have a job on campus?"

"Class," he says, and Gaila trills a laugh.

"This early! Every day!"

"Almost," he says, his hand lifting from his side. Gaila's eyes flick down and she takes his hand.

"Anyone who gets up this early for class every day must not have enough to do at night," she says, grinning so broadly that her teeth look like little white pearls.

Nyota rolls her eyes.

"Yeah," the cadet says, a lopsided smirk spreading over his features.

Just then the bus rounds the corner and the cadet motions to Gaila to step ahead of him to the opening door.

"Come on!" she calls back, and with an apologetic glance at the crowd behind her, Nyota hops on the bus.

After twenty nervous minutes in traffic and numerous stops, the bus pulls up to headquarters and Nyota and Gaila exit near the front entrance of the administrative building. They are the only two in cadet red; everyone else is dressed in the somber charcoal grays and blacks of officers and professors.

As they start up the stairs, Nyota hears a voice hailing her from the lawn. Turning, she sees Leonard McCoy standing on the verge between the sidewalk and the grass, as if he can't decide where to go.

"You need me?" he says, and she looks swiftly at Gaila who raises her eyebrows.

 _I didn't tell him anything,_ Gaila seems to be saying.

With a sigh, Nyota descends the stairs until she is a few feet in front of the doctor.

"What are you doing here?"

"Some monkey lawyer from the Judge Advocate's office subpoenaed your medical records. Said they needed them for a hearing this morning. Wouldn't tell me anything."

"And you decided to just show up."

"Good poker partners are hard to come by these days. If they are getting ready to run you out, I need to know."

At that Nyota smiles and lets her hand brush McCoy's forearm.

"Stop worrying. I'm okay."

"Then why did—"

"It's a long story," she says, suddenly self-conscious here on the sidewalk as people are forced to detour around her. "I'll fill you in. Later. I have to go now."

"You sure you don't need me?"

"Go back to work before you're late," she calls. As she heads up the stairs to where Gaila waits, she feels a pang of regret that she has had to be so circumspect with everyone—Gaila and now McCoy, good and faithful friends who deserve better treatment than being kept in the dark this way.

The front entrance of the administration building opens into a large marble foyer with hallways branching off into three directions. The short hallway to the left leads to the hearing room, a small auditorium with a gallery for witnesses and visitors and a semicircle of desks at the front for the board members. People appearing before the board are required to stand at a lectern facing away from the audience.

As Nyota makes her way up the aisle to a seat in the gallery, she thinks that the arrangement of the room is designed to give the board an overwhelming symbolic authority. By contrast, the lonely person standing behind the lectern must feel insignificant or intimidated.

Several people she doesn't know are already seated, but on the front row is a sandy-haired man in civilian clothes sitting by himself.

As if he senses her presence, he tips his head towards her as she looks in his direction.

Chris Thomasson, Spock's cousin.

Nyota lets out a breath. At least someone from Spock's family is here to support him.

"I'm so glad you are here," she says, sliding into the seat next to his. His eyes flick past her and she turns to follow his gaze.

"Oh, I don't think you've met my roommate," Nyota says, watching Chris as he shifts his posture and extends his hand to Gaila.

"I'm Chris," he says, stroking Gaila's fingers in a traditional Orion greeting. _That's interesting._ Nyota had no idea that he was familiar with Orions. She herself knows only a few, all of them cadets at the Academy. Something in Chris' demeanor is suddenly more attentive, not in the way that men often are when Gaila wants them to be, but with something akin to genuine curiosity.

Then he shifts his focus to Nyota.

"How are you doing?" he asks, and she gives a little shrug. _How is she doing?_ She doesn't even know.

So much of the past week has been a blur, with Samuel T. Cogley's appearance throwing her expectations into disarray. A week ago she would have told anyone who asked that she was watching her world, her future, slipping away beyond her control. Now she is less certain about the outcome of the hearing.

"What about Spock?" Chris asks, and Nyota shrugs again.

"I haven't seen him since Wednesday," she says.

"I'm here for the weekend," Chris says softly, bending his head close to hers as if he is going to whisper. Indeed, he lowers his voice further and adds, "When this is over, take my flitter. My apartment will be empty all weekend. I'm staying with friends in Monterey."

For a moment she is confused about why he is telling her this.

And then she understands.

He's offering a retreat.

And making a comment about the future.

The hearing will end today, but her relationship with Spock will go on.

_Will go on._

To her astonishment, Chris' reassurance brings tears to her eyes. She blinks fiercely and nods.

"Thank you," she says, and Chris leans back in his seat and turns to chat with Gaila.

Many things may end today. The hearing, certainly, and Spock's career in Starfleet, possibly, and her own dreams for serving in space. But no matter what happens at the hearing, she and Spock will not lose each other. They can't. They won't.

They tell each other this with every rare touch these days.

The uneasiness she has felt for weeks still presses her down, but it is lightened by having Chris here, and Gaila. And seeing McCoy at the bottom of the steps.

She remembers Professor Artura's words to the JAG officer—his almost defiant comments—and they lift her spirits higher.

Then the double bell sounds three times, the ancient signal for the beginning of a military hearing, and she looks up as Spock walks in with the nine judges.

X X X X X X X

As the reverberation of the last bell dies away, Samuel T. Cogley takes up the rear of the procession that includes the nine officers of the disciplinary hearing board, the court recorder, and Spock. Following Spock to their seats behind the lonely lectern facing the board officers, Cogley shifts his notepad to his left hand, grabs the armrest with his right, and lowers himself gingerly into the thinly-cushioned chair.

Since coming to Earth less than a week ago, Cogley has suffered increasing pain in his knees—not a surprise to someone used to the lighter gravity of Starbase 11. He stretches his legs experimentally and sighs. Hopefully this hearing will be over before noon and he can catch the daily shuttle back to the Starbase.

Or bully someone—Chris Pike, perhaps—to get him a berth on some passing construction cruiser.

With a twinge, he settles back and listens as Admiral Edmonson opens the hearing.

Cogley's met the admiral once at some Starfleet function in the past, though he can't remember when or where. None of the other officers look vaguely familiar, which might not be a disadvantage in the long run. Cogley knows that his reputation as someone given to dramatics in court could work against him here.

On the other hand, Spock needs some sort of emotional counterpoint to present his case. There is, after all, no logic to explain away what he has done.

He looks to his left at the Commander, whose expression is neutral, whose upright posture is almost unnaturally composed.

Although he hasn't made a formal study of it, Cogley knows that how a defendant presents himself is almost as important as the evidence. Twitchy, nervous defendants often draw a guilty verdict—though a lighter sentence, since their nervousness implies the possibility of remorse.

Cool, collected defendants also are often judged guilty—though their sentences are harsher—punishment for not exhibiting a conscience.

Too late to advise the Commander to look more contrite. Not that he would have—or could have. Cogley's known few Vulcans, but they all have the same imperturbable air about them that smacks of superiority and arrogance.

At least from a human point of view.

The charges are read swiftly and almost tonelessly—and then the JAG officer serving as the prosecution steps up to the lectern and the room becomes preternaturally still.

"It is the judgment of the Judge Advocate General's office that sufficient evidence exists to proceed with the hearing," the middle-aged, balding man says.

"Then state the evidence."

This from Admiral Edmonson, who leans back in his chair and crosses his arms.

"On stardate 2257.87 Captain Christopher Pike forwarded his recommendation that Commander Spock be posted as the first officer of the _Enterprise_. The JAG office began the required routine investigation at that point, including taking depositions from family and colleagues of the Commander as well as requisitioning his medical records and personnel files.

"After the initial gathering, the officer in charge of the vetting believed there was evidence that warranted further investigation into an inappropriate relationship between the Commander and his teaching assistant.

"That evidence included a recent treatment for a rare sexually transmitted disease-"

"Objection!"

"Mr. Cogley," Admiral Edmonson says into the microphone on his desk, "this is not a court of law. You will have an opportunity to address the evidence in due course."

Of all the evidence uncovered in the discovery process, the Andorian virus—and Spock's and Nyota's both being treated for it—is some of the most damning. Cogley had hoped that JAG would discount it because of the conjectural nature—after all, the fact that both had the same sexually transmitted virus is, from a legal standpoint anyway, merely coincidence. Proving cause and effect is much more difficult.

Still—once the idea is out there, he can't control how it might prejudice the judges.

In his seat beside Cogley, Spock continues to look straight ahead, no obvious emotion on his face.

"Continue," the admiral says, and the JAG officer looks down at his PADD and says, "Furthermore, we have a report filed with Admiral Keening's office by a member of the civilian staff saying that the cadet has been seen at the Commander's apartment for extended periods of time—"

Cogley starts to rise again and catches Admiral Edmonson's eye. The complaint filed by the neighbor—Admiral Keening's niece, as he recalls—is also not proof of anything conclusive. Cogley is surprised that JAG has brought up two unsubstantiated claims in a row.

A serious weakness in their presentation.

When he had asked the Commander about that neighbor—Andrea Olson, who works in the finance office of Starfleet—Spock had been vague about what she might know or what her motives for reporting him might be.

"She is a minor annoyance more than anything else," Spock said and Cogley replied, "Commander, how much do you know about human women?"

Spock raised an eyebrow and Cogley had the impression that he was about to say something—but the moment passed.

"Routine security tapes corroborate the testimony of the witness," the JAG officer says. "Since August of last year, Cadet Uhura visited the Commander's private quarters 17 times, spending an average of two hours each visit, and twice staying more than six."

Not good, but still no smoking gun, Cogley thinks. Unless they have something that ties the Commander and the cadet in an actual compromising situation, this hearing might be over in a reasonable amount of time.

He flexes his knees again and sighs. As much as he hates space travel, he is looking forward to the trip home.

"Any other evidence?" says Admiral Edmonson, and the JAG officer shakes his head.

"We have testimony from former students and colleagues who say that they suspected an unusually close relationship between the Commander and the cadet, though nothing that could be verified."

At that Cogley shifts in his seat and doesn't disguise his sound of disgust.

"Mr. Cogley," the Admiral says, and for a moment Cogley expects another reprimand. "You may address the board."

Putting both hands on the armrests of the chair, Cogley pushes himself up and steps to the lectern, placing his notepad before him.

"Members of the board," he says, "Commander Spock appears before you today accused of breaking Articles 73 and 74 of Starfleet's code governing relationships with subordinates. None of the evidence provided by the prosecution would pass muster in a regular court of law. It simply doesn't rise to the level of admissible evidence.

"The medical records, for example."

Cogley pauses, watching the board members closely. He senses their uneasiness—a ripple in their motions, an intake of breath from someone.

So. They are surprised that he is addressing this head on—which can only mean that they assume the two infections are connected.

All the more reason to attack it without delay, before the impression of guilt is immutable.

"As noted, both the Commander and Cadet Uhura were treated for a similar viral infection a day apart. However, the chief medical officer states that at least two other such cases of the Andorian virus were diagnosed at the infirmary during that same time. None of the people treated were Andorians, I might add—and all were attendees at the quarterly Federation session."

 _A rustle in the room as some of the board members shift in their seats._ Good. He's making them doubt what they thought they knew. Uncertainty makes people squirm.

Cogley presses forward.

"The chief medical officer also says that our knowledge about this particular virus is limited. Although its primary transmission for Andorians is through sexual contact, with other species this isn't proven."

Another rustle.

"As for the time the Commander's teaching assistant spent at his apartment, the Commander is not alone among the faculty in having work sessions in private settings. I have here a letter from Professor Catherine Carter and another from her aide, Janna Lin, attesting to the many hours they have spent working on a scanning subroutine in a work space set up in Professor Carter's apartment. "

Cogley pauses long enough to make sure every board member is looking in his direction before he says, "Professor Carter lives in the same faculty housing as the Commander. In fact, Professor Carter indicates in her letter that on several occasions before the Feynman Conference, Cadet Uhura worked in her apartment for several extended sessions."

This time the rustle seems to whip around the room, and Cogley swivels about, looking at the sparse crowd in the gallery. The cadet is there, and another cadet with her, an Orion. The roommate, obviously. The sandy-haired human sitting with them looks oddly familiar—and not, at the same time.

 _A paradox to consider later_.

Cogley turns his attention to the board members.

"Now, I'm not casting aspersions on the Commander's neighbor who filed the report," Cogley says, holding his hands up and tilting his head, "but surely you can see how easy it would be to…misinterpret…the amount of work necessary to maintain the level of excellence in teaching that the Commander is known for. Lots of preparation time—grading assessments—setting up tutorial rotations. Of course his aide would be busy.

"I remind the board," Cogley says, lowering his hands until he grips the sides of the lectern, "that the Commander's hard work—and that of his aide and his colleague, Professor Artura—resulted in their receiving an invitation to present at this year's Feynman Conference. As you know, the Commander showed exceptional bravery at that conference."

Cogley pauses, waiting for the board members to call up their recent memories of the bombing in Leiden. All of them would know of Spock's involvement—and despite Spock's resistance to being singled out for his contribution, Cogley is more than willing to hold him up as a hero.

When he thinks that the silence has stretched on long enough, Cogley says, "The prosecution has not shown any proof that Commander Spock's relationship with Cadet Uhura is anything other than a professional one. If anyone thinks otherwise—"

He lets the rest of the sentence drift into the unspoken assumptions he knows the humans in the room harbor: dimly understood information about Vulcan sexuality—child marriage and odd cyclical violence, for instance—and their aloofness that makes them hard to know. No other Vulcans currently teach at the Academy, and as far as Cogley has been able to determine, Spock is the only Vulcan to ever graduate from there.

Not surprising, then, that what we think we know about Vulcans is spotty, imperfect.

And probably mostly wrong.

Hazarding a glance at the Commander sitting behind him, Cogley is surprised that his expression is unchanged. If he has any feelings about the hearing—if the prosecution's words are upsetting, or if he senses the mood in the room shifting to more sympathy for his case—the Commander doesn't show it.

Are all Vulcans this hard to read?

He glances to the cadet. Her expression, by contrast, is easy to decipher.

_Hope, and a measure of relief._

A far cry from the crucifixion in her face at the beginning of the hearing.

"If it please the board," Cogley says, "I ask that the charges be dismissed and the Commander be allowed to resume his duties as both an instructor at the Academy and as the first officer of the _Enterprise._ "

Sitting beside the Commander once more, Cogley leans back in his chair and breathes out.

He looks at his chronometer. Still plenty of time to catch the shuttle back to Starbase 11.

All over but for the shouting, he thinks.

And that, of course, is when everything goes wrong.

X X X X X X X

"Commander Spock," Admiral Edmonson says, and Spock steps up smoothly to the lectern. "You've heard the evidence presented by the prosecution."

"I have."

"And you have heard your counsel's response to that evidence."

"I have."

"Do you wish to add anything at this point?"

"Negative."

Admiral Edmonson switches off his microphone and leans to his left toward Admiral Komack, a heavy-set officer with graying hair and deep-set blue eyes. Spock knows him well, having served on two academic committees with him in the past.

On both of those committees they more often than not found themselves on opposite sides of a debate. More than once Admiral Komack had actually raised his voice at Spock during a discussion, though Spock was aware that the Admiral often raised his voice when talking to other committee members as well.

Spock had never considered his disagreements with Admiral Komack anything other than the normal sorts of differences that happened when people of different temperaments were forced to work closely together for a common goal.

Until Samuel T. Cogley had gone over the list of the board members with him the night before and discovered their mutual history.

"Not good, not good, not good," Cogley said when Spock described a recent argument with Admiral Komack about a disbursement of funds.

"I fail to see how our difference of opinion about Academy finances would adversely affect a disciplinary hearing," Spock said, but Cogley didn't explain, merely shaking his head in the way that humans do which is both pejorative and dismissive.

Admiral Edmonson leans back from conferring with Admiral Komack and dips forward toward the microphone.

"Commander," he says, "you do realize that the weight of the evidence is suggestive, even if nothing specific has yet been substantiated. As an officer aboard Starfleet's flagship, you must be above suspicion of any misconduct."

"Agreed," Spock says. He hears Samuel Cogley take a breath, and then Admiral Edmonson says, "So I'm asking you now, as an officer in Starfleet, to explain the nature of your relationship with Cadet Uhura."

"Admiral," Spock hears Samuel Cogley call out from his chair to the rear of the lectern, but Admiral Edmonson holds up his hand and Cogley falls silent.

Letting his hands drift behind his back, Spock considers how to phrase his answer.

"I met Cadet Uhura when she took my introductory xenolinguistics course," he says, and Admiral Komack interrupts.

"Commander, we didn't ask for your history with the cadet. Just an explanation of your relationship."

"My history with Cadet Uhura is pertinent to my explanation," Spock says without hesitation. "May I continue?"

Admiral Edmonson nods, and Spock says, "Her performance in that class was exemplary, as was her performance in my intermediate xenolinguistics course and my morphology class. At no time when I was her instructor did the cadet and I have any conversations that did not revolve around her academic work or achievement. On two occasions we did share a meal together, but that was in the student cafeteria and was at the invitation of a study group which asked me to meet with them to discuss a project proposal."

"As I said," Admiral Komack says, his voice a decibel louder than before, "your history with the cadet is not what interests this board."

"Admiral," Spock says, struggling to keep his voice even, "I stand accused of fraternizing with Cadet Uhura. I wish to make the board cognizant that at no time during our association as instructor and student was the cadet ever treated with favoritism or advantaged in any way. Her accomplishments reflect her merits as a student."

"Then you are saying that at no time _in your history_ has your relationship with Cadet Uhura been inappropriate."

"I am saying," Spock says slowly, enunciating each word, "that while Cadet Uhura was my student, she and I maintained a professional relationship."

"That's not your whole _history_ ," Admiral Komack says, his sarcastic tone apparent even to Spock. "Are you telling this board that all of the evidence presented today is somehow in error—that your medical _history_ just happens to coincide with the cadet's medical _history_ , that your _history_ of late nights at your apartment with the cadet in attendance isn't an indication of a relationship that goes beyond professional?"

"I am not accused of going beyond professionalism," Spock says. At some level he is aware that Admiral Komack's questions are rhetorical, even excessively emotional, and trying to answer them is a mistake. However, as if from a distance, he hears himself say, "I am accused of fraternization. To meet that criteria, the board must show that I have given preferential treatment to Cadet Uhura—or that she was forced into a relationship against her will. I have done neither. I would not."

"Don't lecture me about the definition of fraternization," Admiral Komack says loudly, and Admiral Edmonson makes a motion with his hand.

"Gentlemen," he says, "the question is whether or not the relationship you currently have with your teaching assistant violates Articles 73 or 74. I put it to you directly, Commander. Are you now or have you ever been guilty of fraternizing with subordinates?"

"Not as defined by Articles 73 and 74."

"As Cadet Uhura's instructor, did you engage in a relationship that was more personal in scope and nature than what is accepted for instructors and their students?"

"Not as her instructor."

"And when you hired her as your teaching assistant, you did so based on her merits and not as a result of your personal feelings about her?"

At this Spock balks _. His feelings about her?_

What had he felt about her when he hired her?

Anxiety, certainly, because she seemed less than eager to take on the job.

And some level of worry that like most of his aides she would soon quit.

But had he felt anything else?

That was when he was still bonded to T'Pring, before he knew that she and Stonn were becoming intimate, when he still imagined that she was in his future.

Had he felt anything else?

Absolutely.

Uneasiness born of a growing desire to know Nyota as more than just a student—her mind quick and facile, her intelligence promising a connection that he has found rare in all but the brightest cadets.

And his sexual attraction for her?

For that is what Admiral Komack is really positing—the human belief that sexual intimacy implies an emotional bond.

Or can.

Spock has certainly known humans who were casual participants in sex, adamant that their emotions were free and easy.

This freedom, however, does not define how he feels about Nyota.

"Any…feelings…that I may have had for the cadet were not factors in my decision to hire her."

"Then you had feelings?"

"Sir," Spock says, "I have always had great respect and admiration for the cadet. Both are feelings."

"And nothing else since then?"

From behind him Spock hears Samuel Cogley stand up from his chair and say, "May it please the board, the Commander has already answered your questions."

"No, he hasn't!" Admiral Komack says. "He's told us of his _history_ with the cadet—but he's dodged the question put before him. Are you in an inappropriate relationship with your teaching assistant?"

"If by inappropriate you mean have I fraternized according to Articles 73 and 74, then I am not."

To Spock's surprise, Admiral Komack's face flushes bright red, something he has seen his mother do from time to time when her emotions are particularly fraught. Why the admiral should be so overwrought is a mystery.

"By inappropriate," Admiral Komack says loudly, "I mean in a relationship with someone for whom you have an emotional attachment. Or," he adds, leaning forward into the microphone until the feedback squeals and he has to move back, "if the phrase _emotional attachment_ is too human for you, then in a relationship with someone for whom you have exceptional regard—"

"Please!" Cogley shouts. "Members of the board—"

"Or with whom you choose to spend your recreational time as well as your excessive work demands—"

"Admiral Edmonson, I ask you—"

"Or with whom you share sexual favors—"

"Commander, you don't have to answer any of these—"

"Or for whom you have been willing—indeed, are still willing—to risk your career? Is that specific enough, Commander, even for you?"

"Objection!"

"Mr. Cogley," Admiral Edmonson says, but his voice is weary and the expected scolding never comes.

"Answer the question," Admiral Komack says, and Spock looks down at the lectern, one hand still gripping his wrist behind his back. "Are you in such a relationship with your teaching assistant?"

From the corner of his eye he can see Nyota's roommate Gaila, her bright red uniform an interesting contrast to her almost-luminescent skin. Beside her is his cousin Chris, leaning forward with his elbows propped on his knees as he does when he concentrates carefully.

No one asked Chris to come—or rather, Spock didn't ask him to come. His mother, perhaps? It would be like her to want a family member here.

Or even Sarek. His father, after all, was the one who contacted Chris and asked him to travel from Seattle to San Francisco after the hover bus wreck that sent Spock into the hospital for several days.

In all the turmoil of the past few weeks, he hasn't let himself sense his parents through their bond but has kept them curtained off, at a distance. In retrospect, that may have been a mistake.

"Are you?" Admiral Komack says again, and Spock lets his gaze drift over the nine board members, each who is watching him closely.

Impossible to know how they will judge him; too many variables to calculate the odds.

He takes a breath.

"I am."


	14. The Verdict

**Disclaimer: I'm a scribbler and a pauper, roughly in that order.**

The week before her 16th birthday, Nyota was struck by lightning.

Almost.

She and two friends were camping in the Mahare Nature Reserve when a storm blew up, common in the piedmont where barren stretches of desert butt up to old growth banyan forests and thick underbrush.

The first hint of a storm was a steady uptick in the afternoon heat and a gusty wind from the south. Nyota and her friends, Jason and Anike, had just finished assembling their tent when the first rumbles of thunder rolled over them. Experienced campers all, they hurried to finish and were inside when the first raindrops fell, fat stones of water that swept down so hard that one end of the tent collapsed almost immediately.

Nyota was the first one out, with Jason and Anike close behind. No sooner had they grabbed the metal tent supports than Nyota felt the hair on the back of her neck rise and heard a peculiar buzzing in her ears.

Suddenly her head was slammed into the ground and her vision went white and then black—and for a few moments she floated in what she realized was the aftermath of a lightning strike.

Or a near strike. A tree 20 meters away was the actual target, its trunk split and scarred as the lightning traveled down it and into the ground.

When Spock stands up at the disciplinary hearing and tells the board that Nyota's academic achievement is absolutely her own—when he goes to such pains to divorce himself from her success that he provokes Admiral Komack with his deliberate recitation—she feels as she did all those summers ago, the moist heat rising around her face, the hair on her neck prickling in anticipation of what she knows is coming.

He's going to sacrifice himself and tell—but not until he makes clear that she earned her grades, that she has been granted nothing in the way of favoritism.

It is a generous offer—and as she watches Samuel T. Cogley rise and Admiral Komack shout—Spock stands between them like someone caught in a storm.

_Are you involved with your teaching assistant emotionally? Are you involved sexually? Are you involved to such a degree that you are past caring about your career?_

The meaning behind the admiral's words ricochet around the room.

"Are you?" Admiral Komack asks once, twice, and Spock glances back briefly before looking straight ahead.

"I am," he says, and Nyota exhales so loudly that Gaila grabs her hand.

"May I remind the board," Cogley says, raising his voice over the murmur in the room, "that the Commander is accused of fraternization, and that has not been proven."

Admiral Edmonson leans forward into the microphone and says, "Commander, you may step down."

Like watching someone in slow motion, Nyota sees Spock turn and walk back to his seat beside Cogley.

And then the Admiral's eyes are on her.

"Cadet Uhura," he says, and she stands and makes her way around the low wall separating the gallery from the floor of the auditorium. To her own ears her footsteps are loud and percussive, almost angry.

Well, she is. She can't hide that.

Approaching the lectern, she is careful not to make eye contact with either Spock or Cogley. Instead, she trains her gaze to the board members sitting in front.

"Cadet," Admiral Edmonson says, "you've heard the Commander's characterization of your relationship."

"Yes, sir."

"How long have you known the Commander?"

"I met him when I took his introductory xenolinguistics class," she says, "my second semester at the Academy."

"And how long have you been his teaching assistant?" the admiral says. Nyota fights back her irritation at having to answer questions she's sure the board members already know the answers to.

"I began working for Commander Spock in August of this school year."

"And you are a third year cadet?"

"I just finished my third year."

Again she struggles not to sound annoyed. From behind her she hears a huff—Samuel Cogley, most likely, telegraphing his displeasure.

"Commander Spock claims that while you were his student, he showed no favoritism to you and did not engage in a personal relationship."

"He didn't."

"Yet your academic record shows almost perfect scores in each of the three classes in which you were his student."

The heat rises to her face again. The insult to them both is infuriating.

"Sir," she says, aware that her voice is shaking slightly but unable to steady it, "if you check my academic record, you will see that the grades I received in Commander Spock's classes are the _lowest_ grades I have earned at the Academy."

A murmur from the end of the semicircle of desks—one of the admirals, Admiral Garner, a thin woman with salt and pepper hair, bends down and speaks into the microphone.

"Did the Commander treat you unfairly? Did he expect more of you, perhaps, than he should have?"

This insult is as bad as the first. Worse, because it implies malice on Spock's part.

"The Commander has always been fair to all of his students," Nyota says too loudly. "Even those students who complain that he is a difficult professor can't complain that he is unfair."

"And this…relationship," Admiral Garner says. "Did the Commander ever imply that you would be punished if you refused to participate? Did you worry that your grades might suffer more if you did not…give in?"

 _Haven't they been listening!_ Nyota feels a wave of despair.

"As the Commander told you," she says, her hands flat on the lectern, her body tilted forward, "he never treated me as anything other than a student while I was enrolled in his classes. Our…personal relationship…did not begin until later."

"But he is your supervisor. You are his teaching assistant?"

"Yes."

"Has he ever suggested that your continued employment is dependent on your personal relationship with him?"

"No! He wouldn't do that!"

"Cadet," the admiral says, "I'm not asking these things to upset you. Your own conduct is not under investigation. As your superior officer and your direct supervisor, the Commander is in a position to be able to pressure you into a relationship against your will—"

"But he—"

"Please hear me out. I'm not saying that he has, but this board is tasked with making sure that such inappropriate conduct has not occurred. It is for your benefit, Cadet, that we follow this line of questioning."

"But…"

Nyota falls silent. Of course the admiral is right. If Spock weren't Spock—if he were, for instance, an unscrupulous or manipulative supervisor—

But that idea is so ludicrous that she can't finish it.

"If you are uneasy," Admiral Edmonson adds, "you may testify to the board in private."

His words shock her out of her lethargy. The admiral is suggesting that she is afraid of Spock, that she is being dishonest even now. She shakes her head.

"No, sir," she says, looking down at her hands.

"You may step down," Admiral Edmonson says, and Nyota has a _frisson_ of fear. That's it? She looks at the board members sitting in front of her, most who are reading their PADDs or talking softly with a neighbor. Their relative inattention at this moment of awful weight makes her angry.

"Sir," she says, loudly and without preamble. The board members look up and she is careful to catch each person's eye before she continues.

"You must believe me when I tell you that Commander Spock is an excellent professor who would never fraternize with a student. I haven't taken a class with him in almost a year and our…relationship…only began a few months ago."

"But he initiated it."

This stated as a fact by Admiral Komack, who turns to the officer on his other side and nods.

"No!" Nyota says, and then adds, "I mean, I don't know who initiated it. It just sort of evolved. I never felt forced. It was a mutual decision."

"Thank you," Admiral Edmonson says, and she knows she is being dismissed.

When she moves away from the lectern she feels Spock's dark eyes following her. _If she could only speak to him, or feel him in her mind, the bright geometry of his thoughts intersecting her own!_ The loneliness is hard to bear.

Her legs feel wooden as she makes her way back to the gallery. Sliding into her seat, she hears Chris say, "It's okay," and she shakes her head. It _isn't_ okay. The board doesn't look moved at all by what she had to say.

Now that she's been called to testify, the board will probably deliberate. If Samuel Cogley's prediction is right, they won't recess but will deliberate here, now, so that they can question Spock about any unresolved concerns before they settle on a verdict.

"Once they go into deliberations," Cogley told her two days ago when they met briefly to discuss strategy, "you will be able to leave the hearing if you want to. It could go on for some time. And if they choose not to withdraw for the deliberation, you might not want to listen to everything. It's bound to be upsetting."

She had given him what she hoped was her most scornful expression.

"You don't really think I'd leave, do you?"

He had eyed her closely before answering.

"No, I guess I don't."

Yet here she is at that moment, listening as Admiral Edmonson tells the audience that the board members will now discuss the charges and the evidence presented before coming to a judgment, and what she wants most of all in the world is to get up and walk out the short hallway to the marble foyer of the administration building, push open the front door, and descend the long steps, following the sidewalk to the transport shelter and hopping on the first bus that stops.

_If they find Spock guilty…_

It will be because she hasn't been convincing enough, because her assertions that Spock is just and fair have fallen on deaf ears.

_If they find Spock guilty…._

She told Admiral Komack that she didn't know who initiated their relationship—but she does know that both of them were astonished when it happened—not because they hadn't imagined it many times, but because they had said nothing to each other about the growing, gnawing attraction that made working together both a looked for gift and a dreaded burden.

"We could be censured if we continue," he said to her the night they were caught in a sudden downpour and found themselves alone in his apartment.

"I want this," she had replied, pulling him toward the bedroom, undressing and watching him undress, letting herself slip into his mind as willingly as she slipped into his bed.

_If they find Spock guilty…_

Samuel Cogley said that the board had many options at that point, only one which was dismissal.

"They could reduce him in rank or take away his posting on the _Enterprise,_ " Cogley said, and Nyota said, "That would be worse than being dismissed outright."

"Maybe," Cogley said, not bothering to hide his skepticism. "Though he could always work his way back up."

"Not to the _Enterprise_ ," she said. "That would be gone forever."

"So he gets another ship one day," Cogley shrugged, and Nyota shook her head slowly.

"You don't understand. The E _nterprise_ is special. Anything else would be…unacceptable."

If they find Spock guilty and he loses the _Enterprise_ , she loses it, too.

Somehow she hadn't figured that into the equation until now, and the idea makes her take a breath.

"You okay?" Gaila asks, and Nyota nods briefly.

"I'll be back," Gaila says, exchanging a look with Chris. They've been conferring through most of the hearing, so softly that Nyota hasn't followed their conversation. Clearly they still are.

Gaila slips her hand into Chris' and gives the Orion farewell finger stroke.

If she weren't so distracted, so frantic with worry, Nyota would ask them what they were up to, but before she can, Admiral Edmonson's voice rings out.

"The chair recognizes Professor Sanchez."

Dressed in the deep charcoal gray of the Academy faculty, the only member of the disciplinary board not an officer in Starfleet is an elderly physics professor that Nyota knows from a symposium she attended. He clears his throat and says, "Members of the board, I move that we vote now to dismiss the charges. I've heard nothing today that suggests Commander Spock wouldn't be more valuable back where he belongs, at the Academy and preparing for the launch of the _Enterprise_."

X X X X X X X

From the moment the double bells rang to begin the hearing, Chris was thankful that he talked Amanda and Sarek out of attending. Until the last moment they had planned to come—but Chris had appealed to Amanda's emotions ("Your presence will add to Spock's distress," he told her) and Sarek's logic ("All nine members of the board are humans—and they may see the presence of the Vulcan Ambassador as a heavy-handed reminder of whose son is accused…and they might resent it.")

In the end, he promised to go in their stead and to keep them apprised throughout the hearing. All morning he kept one promise and broke the other. He didn't leave the hearing room but he also sent no messages—unable to predict what the outcome would be and not willing to mislead his aunt and uncle.

The hearing was the proverbial roller coaster ride. As he listened to the JAG officer present the evidence, Chris felt his heart sink. But then Samuel Cogley got up to speak.

Despite his frumpy appearance, Cogley acquitted himself well. He diffused the most troubling evidence—the medical records, the surveillance tapes—and made Spock and Nyota seem like nothing more than what they try to present to the world—a young professor and his student aide.

A sham, of course, as Chris decided the first time he met Nyota after Spock was injured in the hover bus wreck. Her distress when Spock lay unconscious in the hospital, her initial reluctance and ultimate success in linking with him telepathically, her alerting the doctors to Spock's over-sedation and the dangers to him as a Vulcan—something more than professor and aide was going on there.

And later, when Spock was discharged and Chris had an opportunity to see them together unobserved—their tender affection shown in small gestures, their meaningful looks, the way they turned in unison when Chris approached, as if they were in tune with each other's perceptions.

Which perhaps they are. Spock may have bonded with her in that peculiar way Sarek and Amanda are connected. However, as much as Chris wants to ask, he won't. This much he knows about Vulcans—and about his cousin in particular: they value their privacy and are adept at dodging unwanted questions.

So when Spock was called to the stand and Admiral Komack began his relentless questioning, Chris wasn't surprised to hear Spock sidestep the obvious verbal traps.

The Admiral's dislike was disturbing, revealing a loss of objectivity that Chris found shocking for a disciplinary hearing judge. The other judges looked discomfited during the badgering, as well, though Admiral Komack continued probing, almost needling, Spock who stood quietly, apparently unflustered.

But Chris wasn't fooled.

When he is angry, Spock becomes quieter than usual and more deliberate in his actions. Even from his seat in the visitors' gallery, Chris saw a flush creep up Spock's neck and around his ears. The slight frown on his brow was another giveaway.

"Are you in such a relationship?" the Admiral almost shouted, and Chris flinched.

"Are you? Answer the question!"

And Spock did.

Softly. Firmly.

"I am."

The entire landscape of the hearing changed with those two words.

Clearly Nyota was as surprised as Chris was. From his right he heard her let out a little gasp, and Gaila caught his eye briefly before taking her roommate's hand.

A good thing Gaila was here. When he first saw her, she reminded him so much of his old girlfriend C'rina that he was momentarily taken aback.

He tries not to think too hard about why that relationship hadn't panned out, but her loss is like a missing tooth, and when he isn't careful, or when he has too much time on his hands, he probes that ache.

In many ways Gaila is nothing like C'rina. For one, Nyota's roommate has classic Orion features and the luxurious red ringlets that characterize the largest and best-known clan.

C'rina's father, by contrast, was a Romulan slave trader, her mother part of his cargo. Her mixed heritage made C'rina fierce and ambitious and determined in a way that was sometimes frightening.

Gaila radiated friendship and concern when she brushed Chris' fingers when they met—unlike C'rina, whose touch always felt seductive—or if not consciously manipulative, at least erotic. Compared to C'rina, Gaila is a kid—beautiful and pleasant, but young.

The way Nyota is young, though Nyota has a _gravitas_ , a seriousness, that makes her seem more mature—

He quickly squelched that line of thinking, feeling a little silly to think of himself as some elder with lots of experience. At 31 he's not exactly an old man.

Still, he felt protective as he sat with Gaila and Nyota in the visitors' gallery.

When the admiral called Nyota's name, Chris saw her jump and he half rose from his seat, his hand extended to help her navigate her way to the aisle.

As the board began questioning her, Chris felt again what he had when they first met—that she had some sort of inner resources that made her worth knowing, that explained why Spock would drop his natural reserve and risk a friendship—and more.

Sitting so straight that he didn't appear to touch the back of his chair, Spock was still, his face in profile, a slight frown on his brow, his eyes black and opaque in the overhead light as he watched Nyota closely, his hands splayed over his knees.

_The inquisition position._

Amanda's phrase for the way Spock leans into a problem, both metaphorically and physically.

"Like he's about to attack you if you dare question him," Chris overheard Amanda tell her sister Cecilia one evening during an annual summer visit. "When he perches on a chair like that, I know it's too late. He won't talk unless it's his idea. Completely shuts down on me."

It's true, Chris thought. He'd seen Spock get into that position before when he didn't want to deal with something unpleasant.

Like the time their grandmother accused them of trampling her prize camellia bush. How old had they been? Seven and ten? Fairly young, at any rate.

They hadn't trampled it—not exactly—but they had stripped most of the flowers, the buds, and the newest leaves from the branches. Chris no longer remembered why—something Spock wanted to investigate with his scanner. Mitochondrial migration? Something like that. Whatever it was, Chris had been a willing participant, if not the instigator.

Never a particularly demonstrative person, Grandmother Grayson was livid when she walked out into the back yard and saw her bush almost bare. Although all four of her grandchildren were in the back yard playing, she dismissed the two girls immediately, sending Anna and Rachel into the house. Chris remembered Rachel looking back over her shoulder, her expression worried, and rightly so. The few times their grandmother had scolded them, she had been relentless in her criticism and harsh in her punishment.

No supper, for instance, and a phone call to the offender's mother—who in turn received an earful about her wayward child.

Both Spock and Chris stood still and watched as Grandmother Grayson picked up the few blooms littering the ground under the camellia bush. She straightened up, looked at the bruised flowers in her hands, and threw them on the ground in disgust.

"Come with me," she said, and Spock and Chris trooped into the house behind her.

From the stairwell Chris could see Rachel peeking over the banister. So could their grandmother.

"I sent you to your room," she said, and Rachel scurried up the stairs.

"You two, sit here," she said, and Spock and Chris sat side-by-side on the old-fashioned floral sofa. Spock was so short that his feet did not touch the ground. Chris' barely did.

"That camellia bush," she said as soon as she settled herself into a chair opposite, "is an heirloom, and because of your interference, it may not survive another season."

Chris was taken aback. He had heard his grandmother brag more than once about the flowers. Indeed, she had won several awards from her local garden club. Perhaps his grandmother had planned to enter the flower show this year and now couldn't. He hung his head and looked at his hands, still stained green from helping Spock grind up the leaves for the scanner.

"I believe you are in error," Spock said, and Chris heard his grandmother take in a breath. "We left enough new foliage to maintain the health of the plant, and the flowers had already pollinated."

Uncertain who to watch—his grandmother or Spock—Chris settled on darting glances between the two of them.

Clearly his grandmother was angry—though because of the damage to the camellia bush or because Spock had contradicted her, Chris wasn't sure. Both, possibly.

Spock, on the other hand, didn't seem to recognize her anger.

"If you like, Grandmother, I can—" he began.

"This is outrageous," their grandmother said. "I always thought Vulcans were taught to respect their elders, but you have disrespected my property and lied about it. What would your father say if he knew you were lying?"

"Grandmother," Spock said, his neck flushing and his expression darkening, "I have not lied to you, and I would never disrespect—"

"Christopher," their grandmother interrupted. "I expected better from you. You should have been making sure things like this didn't happen, but look at you."

She pointed to his stained hands and Chris felt his face grow hot.

At his side, Spock slid forward along the sofa and Chris wondered if he might be about to bolt from the room. Looking at him, he was surprised to see Spock's face set in a steely attitude, his fingers curved over his knees, his posture statue-like, immobile.

"What would you think if I called your father and told him what you have done?" their grandmother said, though her words were obviously meant for Spock alone. "And your mother? This is how she's raising you? I suppose it's to be expected, without anyone around to help her. Well, she can't say she wasn't warned."

Again Chris darted a glance at Spock, who hadn't moved, not even an inch. He looked as solid as marble, and as mute.

Only after their grandmother dismissed them, telling them to rake up all the fallen leaves and stems before heading up to their rooms for the rest of the day, did Spock come back to life.

"I'm sorry," Chris said later as they pulled the rakes from the garden shed. "She's just funny about her flowers."

At first Spock had said nothing, had simply attacked the ground under the bush so hard that bits of grass and clods of dirt were tangled in his rake.

"I did not lie," he said, and Chris said, "I know. Everybody knows Vulcans can't lie."

Spock had given him such a strange look then that even now Chris squirms recalling it—such a stupid assumption, and a stupider comment. No wonder Spock was private about his life, if the people who know him best can let what they think they know about Vulcans color their expectations this way.

When they were teenagers, Chris almost overcompensated for having once believed the stereotypes by willfully ignoring Spock's Vulcan heritage, even taking umbrage when his friends referred to him casually as a Vulcan.

"Why do you always call him that?" he snapped one day at his best friend Jonathan.

"All I asked was when your Vulcan cousin was coming for a visit," Jonathan said, his hands raised in surrender. "I didn't mean anything by it!"

"If he were a human you wouldn't call him my human cousin," Chris said, and Jonathan shrugged.

"Why are you so mad?"

"Because you act like being Vulcan is the most important thing about Spock," Chris said, and Jonathan threw up his hands again.

"Back off!" he said. "I didn't mean anything by it!"

But Chris knew better. At some level, Spock's being Vulcan _was_ the most important thing to many of Chris's friends—even the ones who socialized with Spock when he visited. Chris commented on it once to Spock, who seemed neither surprised nor distressed by it.

"They know so few Vulcans," he said matter-of-factly, reasonably. "It's my defining trait to them."

Chris wasn't satisfied.

"But that's…insulting," he said. "It's like saying that your personality and what you like to do and how you think aren't as important as that one trait. I don't even think about your being Vulcan anymore."

Spock had become very still then, had sat with his back straight, his hands on his knees—almost in the inquisition position, but not quite, his raised eyebrow a wry note in his expression—and said, "You may not think about it, but I always do."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that I am always aware that I am a Vulcan, that people see me that way, that they expect me to act a certain way."

"But that's…wrong!" Chris said, and Spock said, "That is how it is."

"Then the only place you don't have to think about it is back home."

"On Vulcan?"

"Yeah. At least there no one sees you as just a Vulcan."

"No," Spock said thoughtfully. "On Vulcan they see me as a human."

It was one of those funny little throwaway glimpses of his life that Spock let slip from time to time.

"It's okay," Chris reassured Nyota when she sat back down in the gallery, though the truth was that he hadn't been listening as closely as he should have. Her face was drawn and when he took her hand he felt her tremble.

She needed to get out of here—but he had no illusions that he could convince her to leave before the verdict was decided. Now that she'd finished her part, the board might not take too long to deliberate. If Gaila was going to get an overnight bag ready for Nyota, she probably needed to go ahead and do it.

He gave the Orion a look and she nodded.

"I'll be right back," she said into Nyota's ear.

Chris' flitter was parked in the overflow lot near the visitors' center. He'd given Gaila the access code so she could put Nyota's bag there. Before she left, she ran her hand along his, one finger extended just so, and he wondered again where C'rina was these days and what she was doing.

Better not to think about it too hard.

A commotion from the front of the room pulled him back to attention.

"The Chair recognizes Professor Sanchez."

For the first time since the hearing began, Chris realized that not all of the board members were admirals. Or at least, the professor who was speaking was not wearing a military uniform. Spock told him that some of the teaching staff at the Academy were not Starfleet officers but were civilians—his colleague in the language department, for example, the Andorian who developed that successful lab tutorial program with Spock.

Would a civilian professor be more or less likely to be sympathetic to someone accused of fraternizing with a student?

_More, apparently._

Nyota grabs his hand when the professor asks that the charges be dismissed.

Is that it? Can it possibly end this quickly, this easily?

"I'm not satisfied that Commander Spock did not coerce Cadet Uhura into a relationship," Admiral Komack says, and Admiral Edmonson replies, "Why? They both deny that he did."

"He's a Vulcan," the admiral who had questioned Nyota earlier, Admiral Garner, says, "and we know they are strong telepaths. The Cadet may not be aware that she is being coerced through telepathic means—"

Chris is on his feet before he knows what he is doing. The implication that Spock would manipulate anyone—much less someone he cares about—for personal gain is so shocking that Chris isn't certain what he will say. He just knows that someone has to.

Fortunately Samuel Cogley beats him to it.

"Admiral Edmonson!" Cogley says, standing at his seat.

"Understood," the admiral says. He leans forward toward Admiral Garner at the end of the row of desks and says, "Please refrain from speculation unless you have evidence to support it."

"I apologize and withdraw the statement," she says, though she doesn't sound abashed at all. In fact, she looks somewhat smugly around at the other judges, and Chris is dismayed to see them exchanging glances.

_The axe is going to fall. He can feel it, like a tide beginning to turn._

No matter that they haven't proven any fraternization according to their own rules. What was it—fraternization had to involve either offering an advantage or threatening a punishment? By that definition, Spock isn't guilty.

On the other hand, he has admitted to being in a personal, sexual, emotional relationship with someone he supervises—not a good idea for lots of reasons, though not unheard of, either.

Then one of the other admirals, an older man who hasn't spoken before, says, "Why is this interspecies couple being singled out for reprimand? That's what I want to know. If the Commander were human, would we be here now? I don't think so."

As much as Chris agrees, he is horrified that the words have been said aloud. Almost at once the mood in the room darkens and the other judges shift in their chairs.

"What are you implying?" Admiral Komack says, but no one answers. "Are you suggesting that I am prejudiced against off-worlders?"

"I'm just noting the unusual rise in anti-alien sentiments and the coincidence of this relationship coming under the scrutiny of a disciplinary board," the older admiral says.

"Then you _are_ accusing me!"

"Gentlemen," Admiral Edmonson says, but Admiral Komack continues.

"I don't care if the Commander is a Vulcan or not, if he is some hero or not, or if he's Chris Pike's only choice or not! My only interest is in making sure that Starfleet regulations are followed!"

"Even if the person accused has proven, time and again, his value to the Academy and to Starfleet?" Professor Sanchez says, and Admiral Komack replies, "No one is so valuable that he doesn't have to follow regulations. Not even someone who uses his influence to jump rank—"

"Admiral Edmonson!" Samuel Cogley shouts from his seat.

If Chris suspected that Admiral Komack was jealous of Spock before, now he is sure. His comment about _using his influence_ is a thinly veiled reference to Sarek, though anyone who knows Spock—or knows about him—could not accuse him of being promoted too soon. If anything, his extra duties at the Academy have kept him from advancing further in Starfleet.

Before Admiral Edmonson can respond to Cogley's objection, Admiral Komack says, "I withdraw that last comment. But I do want some clarification about one thing. What confuses me," he adds, "is why a Vulcan—pardon me, Admiral Edmonson, but I don't think I'm saying anything unsubstantiated here—but why a Vulcan, known for logic and rational thought—would throw away all his cultural upbringing, turn his back on everything his people hold dear, and engage in a relationship that, if not strictly fraternization, is close enough to it to be unwise. If I seem confused, Commander, it's because I can't understand how you, of all people, could let this happen."

His last sentence is clearly directed at Spock—who sits, ramrod straight, his hands resting on his knees, his eyes straight ahead.

Watching him flick his gaze to Admiral Edmonson, Chris watches as Spock stands slowly, his hands dangling uncharacteristically at his side, his shoulders hunched forward as if he is about to step into a strong headwind.

His posture makes him look vulnerable somehow, and Chris' heart lurches as Spock steps gingerly toward the lectern but pauses a few feet back, as if he cannot make himself go on.

Every eye in the room is on him. When he sees Spock open his mouth, Chris holds his breath, the better to hear what he is saying.

"I was unable to control my…feelings," he says so quietly that Admiral Edmonson asks him to repeat himself.

This time his voice is firmer, but Chris hears the anguish in his admission.

"I was unable to control my feelings."

Of all the people in the room, Chris may be the one who understands best what those words cost Spock. They are an abnegation of what he strives to be—what his father expects from him, what his culture values most.

Because Chris is watching him so closely, he sees Spock blink as he faces the board, sees a tiny tremor in his left hand, as if his control over his body is as tentative as his control over his emotions.

And then Spock moves back to his seat, his face pinched, his mouth set.

"The board will recess to discuss the verdict," Admiral Edmonson says into the microphone, startling Chris. He had assumed the deliberations would conclude here, in the hearing. Is that a good or bad sign?

"No way to know," Samuel Cogley says as he steps over to the visitors' gallery as the judges file out. "It does suggest that the board is divided. Komack's a definite guilty, and I think the professor will vote to acquit, but I learned long ago never to predict what a jury will do."

"Is it okay if I—" Nyota says, lifting her hand to where Spock sits near the lectern, and Cogley shakes his head.

"Better not," he says. "After this is over—"

He waves his arm as if to include the entire hearing and Chris puts his hand in his pocket and pulls out a thumb drive.

"Here," he says, pressing it into Nyota's palm. "Here are the access codes to my apartment and my flitter. You'll need them…later."

Nyota takes the thumb drive and gives a ghost of a smile.

 _How inconvenient,_ Chris thinks when his hand touches hers, _to feel a surge of attraction when he's trying so hard not to—_

He looks around for Gaila, who should have been back by now.

"Excuse me," he says to Cogley and Nyota, making his way out the hearing room and down the hall to the front door of the administration building.

_Some air will help._

Standing at the top of the stairs, he sees Gaila almost at the same time that she sees him, from 50 meters down the sidewalk. She waves and flashes him a smile—and in spite of himself, he laughs. What was he feeling earlier? Like some old codger next to these young kids?

What nonsense.

By the time he and Gaila re-enter the hearing room, the judges are filing back in—a surprise, since Cogley had suggested that the board was divided and Chris expected the verdict to take some time.

His heart beating hard, Chris files into his seat and watches as Cogley joins Spock at the lectern.

"Commander Spock," Admiral Edmonson says when the last judge is seated, "are you prepared to hear the judgment of this board?"

"I am," Spock says.

Admiral Edmonson clears his throat and reads from his PADD.

"After due deliberation, this board finds that Commander Spock is not guilty of fraternization under Articles 73 and 74 of Starfleet's disciplinary code."

Gaila lets out an almost inaudible squeak. When Chris glances at Nyota, he sees that her mouth is pursed, her nostrils flared. She takes a quick gulp of air and darts a look in his direction.

"However..." Admiral Edmonson says, and Chris feels his heart in his throat.

_However?_

"The board does find that the relationship that the Commander admits to having with his teaching assistant is both ill-advised and offers ample opportunities for future misconduct. As such, it is the feeling of this board that while the cadet is enrolled at the Academy, the Commander should cease and desist in said relationship."

Admiral Komack, Chris notes, is sitting slumped in his chair, his head tilted to the side, his eyes on Spock.

Is this "cease and desist" order the price the rest of the board had to pay to get Komack to agree to a not-guilty verdict?

Probably. He looks unhappy enough—put out, as it were.

"Because the fraternization charges were unsubstantiated, the Commander's record will remain clear and his rank and postings are unchanged."

Before he continues, Admiral Edmonson glances at Admiral Komack.

"For now. Commander, do you understand that the board advises you to have no further contact with Cadet Uhura?"

"I do."

"And you understand that if you disregard that advice, you can be called to account and possibly sanctioned for it?"

"I understand."

"This isn't just your career you jeopardize, but hers as well. Starfleet's investment in you both is considerable," Admiral Edmonson says, and Chris sees Admiral Komack cross his arms. "It would be a shame for you to risk your careers for…emotional reasons."

Chris sees Spock's eyes narrow a fraction—something he does when he is annoyed.

Well, the Admiral's comment about emotional reasons _is_ insulting.

To a Vulcan, that is.

Even to a Vulcan who has admitted to doing just that—leading with his heart.

"This board is dismissed," the admiral says, and the judges stand up and mill about for a moment. Admiral Komack, on the other hand, leaves abruptly.

Nyota has already started past Chris toward the aisle when he reaches out and catches her arm.

"Not here," he says, shaking his head marginally. "Gaila will take you to the flitter. Your things are already there. I'll bring him out in a minute."

There it is again, the look Nyota gives that makes his stomach lurch—her chocolate eyes wide and luminous, her mouth curved up in genuine joy. From the corner of his eye he sees Gaila looking at him oddly.

Then Nyota leans down to his ear.

"Thank you," she whispers, "from both of us."

He feels her lips drift chastely across his cheek and he looks down, flustered, as she and Gaila make their way up the aisle and out the room.

_I could not control my emotions._

The truth, certainly.

In more ways than one.

X X X X X X X X X

As soon as he engages the starter, Spock sees that someone—Chris, most likely—has already programmed a flight pattern into the flitter and registered a flight plan. All Spock has to do is mark the start time and as far as anyone knows, Chris Thomasson will be on his way back to Seattle.

It means Chris will have to depend on public transport all weekend—or slug a ride with a commuter car.

But Chris assured Spock he didn't mind—that he came to San Francisco with that plan in mind already.

"I promised your parents I'd look after you," he said, grinning, as they walked from the administration building to the overflow parking deck where Nyota waited in the flitter for him. "After you take off, I'll call them and let them know you are okay."

At that Spock had paused briefly and reached inward to his parents. There they were in one corner of his mind—like faint lights: his father steady, his mother warm.

 _I am well,_ he reassured them.

Chris could fill in the details for them when he called.

The flitter rises swiftly and Spock circles over the bay before heading north up the coast. Even over the noise of the engine he can hear Nyota's steady breathing. If he concentrates, he can hear her pulse, too, slower than his own, sounding like some ancient music he learned once for the _ka'athyra_.

As soon as they reach altitude her fingers drift to his hand and he feels her seeking him out through her touch.

"It always feels like electricity," she has said more than once to describe his hand on hers. He never tires of her saying it.

At last he dares to look at her, and when he does, he is surprised that she does not look upset or distressed or angry—none of the emotions he had predicted he might see after the ordeal of the hearing.

Instead, she looks—serene.

Utterly tranquil and calm.

As if she has been meditating cross-legged in front of an _asenoi_ for hours.

He feels a flash of annoyance with himself that his own face is not nearly so composed.

As he watches her, she looks in his direction and folds her palm into his, and suddenly they are linked in a wordless communion.

Her presence in his mind is a balm, cooling his lingering fury and embarrassment of the hearing.

 _It's over_ , she thinks, and he takes a breath.

It is, and it isn't.

The board's cautionary note about the relationship—not an order, exactly, but he knows he is expected to treat it like one.

To cut off all communication with Nyota, to avoid her company, to focus exclusively on his career.

And not to do what he is doing now—letting his hand drift up her arm, her shoulder, his fingertips skirting the edge of her jaw, cupping her ear, pressing lightly along her temple, sending her his unspoken gratitude, telling her as his finger slides back down and across her bottom lip that his need for her is making his heart race in his side, is making the temperature in the flitter almost too warm even for him.

The afternoon sunlight is so bright that he switches on the window filter. Soon, however, he angles the flitter east and the sun is no longer a hindrance.

"Where are we going?" Nyota asks immediately, but he says nothing at first, busying himself with the flitter controls.

"If you look below," he says after a few moments, "you can see the distinctive markings from the Des Moines Lobe of the last Pleistocene glacier."

And at once she understands. Her swiftness of comprehension delights him as it always does.

"You're taking me to the _Enterprise_!"

She says it with certainty and obvious excitement, and he allows himself a moment of pleasure in her reaction.

"Yes," he says, pointing out the window. "The Riverside Shipyards are on partial shut-down for the quarterly retooling. Only a skeleton crew will be in attendance."

He sees her expression fall just a bit—his comment is, after all, an admission that they will have to be just as circumspect as ever—indeed, more so—in each other's company.

But her grin returns when the first construction silo looms on the horizon like a desert oasis.

They bypass that silo and the next, too, skirting the quarry before making a sharp descent.

And at last the ship comes into view, sleek and gleaming in the afternoon light, the saucer almost completely finished, the nacelles partly so.

When Nyota visited with Captain Pike on a barnstorming tour three years ago, the ship had hardly looked like a ship at all—had looked, for all the world, like a crazy spider of struts and metal spikes welded together at weird angles—a description she's amused Spock with frequently.

Not even the updated holovids of the progress come close to communicating the wondrousness of the ship. And Nyota's overlay of emotion makes the ship _alive_ to him.

_Makes everything in her presence alive, including him._

The flitter safely parked, he takes her to the lift at the bottom of the silo and they make their way up to the first access point, near engineering.

The bowels of the ship are crisscrossed and tunneled with exposed wiring and large sheets of transparent aluminum waiting to be molded into the cooling system conduits. All ordinary and therefore uninteresting, yet Nyota quizzes him on everything.

"And this?" she says, pointing to a large fan-like object being assembled on the floor, a hoist ready to lift it twenty feet in the air.

"The coolant separator," he says automatically, and she squints before she says, "And it weighs how much?"

"When it is completed, 1091.95 kilos."

"With or without the water?"

"Without, of course."

"And with it? When the water is running through it, how much will it weigh then?"

The calculation takes less than the time it takes him to note her impish grin.

_Ah. She's teasing him._

A game she plays from time to time, luring him into a recitation of numbers or facts and then springing a question on him which she assumes he will not know—watching him cast about for an answer. If other people are nearby when she asks, she makes sure to catch his eye and run her tongue along her top lip, or exhale slowly, or turn her face in profile and tuck a lock of hair behind her ear.

Anything to distract him, to slow him down.

If they are alone, she's been known to resort to…more extreme measures.

They see several construction workers on their way to the turbolift, most nodding silently or moving to the side of the corridor to let them pass.

He takes her to the communications hub next, the large anodized tanks of sound sensors already in place. She runs her hand along one tank and jerks it away.

"It's cold!"

"The sensor baffles require it," he says simply, and she reaches out once more to the metal canister and laughs.

Watching her seek sensation this way is another thing he allows himself to enjoy.

The bridge is last, and when they step out into the circular work area, Spock tries to let go of his resentment about the day—for the way the hearing colors what he wants to say to Nyota right now.

Everything reminds him of the hearing—even the arrangement of the workstations mirroring, to some degree, the semi-circular desks where the judges had sat and listened to his confession.

Though in the end, his "I am" does not come close to confessing what he shares with Nyota.

Standard has no word large enough.

And Vulcan is too vague.

They do not sit in the captain's chair—though Nyota lets her fingers drift across the armrest. She does sit at the communication station, fingering the switches and looking at the place where the subspace relay will eventually be installed.

"This is the science area," he says, seeing her glance up across the short distance from the communication station. He doesn't need to touch her to see that she is amused.

"Did you design this?" she says, waggling her eyebrows, and he says, "I would never have put these two stations within such close proximity. The potential for distraction is…considerable."

No workers or crew are on the bridge but Spock feels constrained there, as if they are under surveillance. Not until they enter the turbolift does he consider how to say what has troubled him since they left San Francisco.

He reaches to the control panel and presses the stop.

At once the lift is still and silent—almost eerily so.

He sees her look up at him, a question in her expression, and then comprehension.

They move together at the same time, their arms pulling each other close, their foreheads touching.

He tries to hide the anger and frustration of the day from her but she is too quick.

 _What aren't you telling me?_ he hears her say, and he debates how to answer.

"I wanted you here," he says aloud, his voice echoing in the turbolift, "so you have all the data before you decide."

"Decide? Decide what?"

He can't bear to repeat Admiral Edmonson's last words so he shows her instead—an image of himself behind the lectern, the _cease and desist_ crashing in his ears.

 _You could lose the ship,_ he thinks, and he feels her impatience.

_So could you!_

How to tell her that the loss of the ship pales in comparison to losing her? That nothing anyone at Starfleet says can make him weigh his career against his…feelings…for her and not find her worth more?

That even now, barely touching, with all the attendant anxiety of being discovered and reprimanded, he feels more alive than he does when they are apart?

He lifts his forehead from hers and breaks their link.

"If we continue, people may say—"

"People say all kinds of things," she says, lifting the fingers of her right hand to his lips to silence him. "Very little of it is worth hearing."

A weight drops from his shoulders.

She slides her fingers down his chest and finds his palm—and there, he feels it, the snap of electricity as a spark leaps from her hand to his, like the distant hint of thunder on the edge of a receding storm, leaving him like a tree scored by lightning, unshattered, illuminated.

**A/N: Thanks to everyone who read and left kudos and comments!  I hope you enjoyed this story as much as I enjoyed writing it.  I will start posting the sequel--"Crossing the Equator"--in the next couple of days.  It picks up at the end of the hearing and goes through the 2009 movie.  
**


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